„Audiophiles don’t use their equipment to listen to your music. Audiophiles use your music to listen to their equipment.“
Alan Parsons
I dunno if that’s actually an Alan Parsons quote but up vote for any mention of his name. Does sound like something he’d say.
MusicBee on PC
Vinyl Music Player on my phone
Local mp3s and flacs work the best
I dabble with YouTube Music and music-map.com for music discovery
Haven’t found a nice self hosted music streaming setup that I’m happy with (unsatisfied with the apps and features). I want a nice looking app (super subject of course) that supports offline play and ReplayGain. I’m super happy with Navidrome but not with the Windows/Android apps
Audiophiles don’t listen to music, they listen to their headphones
Spotify -> MOTU M2 -> HiFiMan Ananda non-stealth
“High resolution” audio is completely useless for listening (16 bit 44.1 kHz is the best it gets) and there is little value in lossless encodes for listening purposes too, so I don’t get the point of all those “Hifi” streaming services.
If you own lossless encodes, I guess it doesn’t hurt to use them even for listening as storage is cheap these days.Speaking of which, I’d like to switch to purchasing my music though because Spotify will certainly continue on its path towards full enshittification. I want to be in a position where I own all my favourite music before Spotify will be infected with ads on premium plans. Oh and artists are somewhat more likely to be paid a little for their work that way (I hope…)
I plan to use the free YT music for discovery at that point.Completely full of ads already, I routinely get promoted podcasts and gig ticket and merch notifications despite them being turned off.
I started using Spotify lite on my phone. And thankfully, there’s plenty of alternative clients on desktop (such as ncspot). No crap UI elements, just playlists.
TIDAL, K3/K7 (the K7 isn’t portable), Sennheiser HD600s, and a pair of Hifiman HE1000s that I just bought. Both DACs work on all of my devices.
NAS -> ALAC, high-res files -> Plexamp -> Sound Blaster’s recently top-end sound card (name?) -> Schiit Heretic amplifier -> Sony MDR-1ADAC headphones
Or
NAS -> ALAC, high-res files -> Nvidia Shield (via Plex) -> Yamaha RX-A8A receiver -> Polk Monitor 70 tower speakers
If I want the highest quality streaming, then Amazon Music.
Otherwise, things I’ve purchased in 96khz or 192khz from ProStudioMasters.com
I work in the audio post industry, so I’m generally listening on my work rig either through Genelec speakers or Beyer DT880 Pro headphones, fed by a UA Apollo audio interface.
I buy it if I can find it on a platform where the money is actually going to the musician. Then, I upload it in CD quality FLAC format to FunkWhale, and also add it to the SD card in my DAC (a Shanling Q1). Where it’s convenient I listen on the DAC, where it’s not I stream through FunkWhale.
A technics changer or linear tracker. I think the changer has a shure cartridge still but the linear tracker has an at. Sometimes through a pair of numark ttxs with m447s and a rane.
Music collection as flac, navidrome as streaming server, symfonium as android app and B&W P5 or B&W Pi7 S2 for headphones.
I really wanted to like symfonium (even tho its not open source), bc it is a beautiful client, but it is a battery hog. I had to go back to ultrasonic.
I actually found all the subsonic clients to be quite heavy on my battery, so I just stuck with the one I liked the best.
HD 560S for the cans. For my source, I use spotify, using my local library of FLACS for the stuff I like a lot, and just normal spotifly for everything else.
I use deemix to get songs and jellyfin/finamp to listen on my phone. I do miss the discovery of new music from things like Spotify or YouTube music. If anyone has suggestions for music discovery I’d love to hear about them.
Open the Nicotine program that connects to the Soulseek network, then chat with the heads on there. Name a few artists you like and they can hook you up. The most knowledgeable music listeners around. Pretty sure you can search for ppl who have files of an artist you like, and then view their entire library. (NB. Been 10 years since I’ve used it, so YMMV)
Seriously though, the real answer is to resurrect whatever Audiogalaxy was doing in their recommendations-algo, shit was dope.
Qobuz for me.
Best streaming sound available but I had some skipping issues even on very good connections and options for auto Playlist generation and new music discovery was way behind other services. Great if you always knew exaewhat you wanted to hear, but I went to Tidal and their focus on quality is better than most other services but the music discovery algorithms really are quite good, I find myself more eager than ever to tune in to a streaming service.
Plex, though I do occasionally listen to online radios using my podcast player
FLACs/Qobuz via Roon. I spend the most time in my office so that’s where my favorite setup is. LS50 Metas + SVS SB-1000 Pro + Peachtree GaN stack.
I also love my HD660s with the Bottlehead Crack tube amp I built.
