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As far as media goes, you guys will laugh at me but I listen to FM radio 98% of the time. I turn it on every weekday morning at 5:00 AM and it plays all day until around 6:00 PM. When I listen "seriously" I will play CDs on my Sony BDP or just use JRiver with the FLAC files. I took the time to rip all of my CDs to FLAC. JRiver is the mechanism to get that digital music to my analog ears. I love JRiver for a multitude of reasons, but one of my top five would be this : Select an album you don't know. Play it. When you hear a track you particularly like, JRiver lets you give it a star rating. 1 - 5, 5 being the best. Now, when you are just wanting to play familiar tunes that you know and like, simply tell JRiver to randomly play only 3 star tunes, or 5 star tunes, or any star-rated tune, etc. It's a great way to jukebox play a large collection without having to hear songs you don't particularly like, especially in a party or get-together atmosphere. I am lucky in that my tired ears think CDs and FLAC sound awesome - I need not search for improvement in that arena. Saves me money for Jack & Coke. ?

I got into this hobby almost 60 years ago because I love music. At some point I lost my way and it became more about the equipment and chasing the "ultimate quality" ghost. Now that I'm retired and living on a fixed income I'm back to simply enjoying the music. I listen to mainly CD's but when I get a hankering for a particular song/album/artist I have no problem digging out an LP, 45 or a cassette tape. I have way too much physical media to think about converting it to digital. (I stopped counting when Zack was born in 1995, but my guess is I have close to 20,000 unique album length titles on various media.) I do rip and share files with a few members but I always burn mine to CD for playing. Yes, I am a dinosaur.....

I'm hooked on streaming Tidal Hi Res. I got me centered on the music again. It lets me listen to everyone's records, cds and tapes at the touch of my fingers. The Volume control is on my IPad and sounds great. I can get lost in an artist then delete the links when I tire of it so my interface doesn't look like Zumbini's record walls. I CAN ALWAYS GO BACK TO IT. I have 5 versions of Stravinski's Firebird. It's alllllll about the mood. I play what I'm in the mood for and my choices are vast with this media.

The bulk of my CD's are in my basement mancave along with several hundred of my favorite LPs and tapes. I can't back up far enough for a true panoramic view but this should give you a feel for it. Most of the rest of my LP's are in a storage closet around the corner with more cassette tapes, some 45's and 78's, and several hundred RTR's in another closet.

I find it odd for all the technical talk not much on music. Then again when I was in the business we would talk music all day. Well that was years ago lets fast forward with these current times. I'm not asking which format is better then whatnot. I am curious how the peeps here get their music on what formats. Since you guys have me back to stereo listening (thanks to all btw). I have started to look around and cd's seem to by hit or miss on so many of these cd format. Mofi was around but certainly that was about it for different re-masterings. Now I see many formats but no real one stop shopping as it seems for titles seem to be very limited runs. Also anyone here buying hi-res digital recordings as their primary listening? If anyone wants to throw in about discs and the format they're available in? This is not about the best format. But if you like a certain format for whatever reason it would be most appreciated. For overall selection from what I have seen digital seems to offer the widest selection. I know things like mastering made a good difference back in the day. I am assuming that playing field is more or less equalized. I'm a rocker with blues and soul filling in spaces. Which is why I talk about limited selection. If someone finds Audio Fidelity subscription enjoyable let me know. Don't let my taste taint what you like. I'm just looking at the playing field trying to figure what's best form. One time my ex came home while I was listening to an lp with only hunting horns. The look on her face was worth the price of admission. I know I still laugh about it. She probably still thinks maybe I should be committed. Not really but the look and the next few questions were priceless. If there's something you don't like about a format. Please no comments like "Robust yet naive with an hint of spice on your aural sensations". So let me know if you rather not be in the spotlight send a message, text, email. Carrier pigeons are not always reliable.

Sunday Cup of Joe.............

loner_t I hear you I do. But even when the Carver was brand new there always was the question of "how do I get that to work. That was a common quest as whether you had Phase Linear, Mark Levinson or whatever else. It wasn't like one quality brand had more inputs or outputs. Holy Cow the first time I saw a c4000 was so awesome with all those options. Almost 20 years ago PC's and software really kicked things off again for me. So what if reproceesing a video took 8 hours (oh my lol). If you really want to music you will find a way to make it work. Every now and then an "unplanned smoke test" made that decision easier as whatever was out of action. I remember years ago dedicated dead heads were using eac going a snails crawl to weed out sonic artifacts. They offered quite a few shows with all that sonic correction on dvd-audio with 5.1. To me if you really wanted to listen to Old Bessie Smith you had to accept the sound quality of 1930. Ugh now I cant rememder his name but he traveled all around the country recorded people with a set-up in the back of his car. Sometimes that might be the only recorded instance with some of early artist. I can't remember exactly but I want to say his recordings were cut on acetate right in his car. I know some blues fan will probably enlighten us all. Look at what George Martin was able to do with the Beatles with only (4)? Track recorder. Having so many here that want the "tube" sound would take some digging as all that old equipment was gone by the 80's. When mofi did Heart's first album was in fact recorded at some small still hanging on working with a tube studio. If you're an elite listener thinking about Stereophile you had $10k set. Thankfully I never was it was hard enough with just albums. Look how fast 8track tapes disappeared. Reel to reel. People talk about all these different CD's gold, aluminium or a super format is it JVC Japan with XrCD or something along those lines. I bought the Cars first album without realizing it was a HDCD. I say listen to what you like with something you can afford and get to buy more music. Everybody is different and hear differently or willing to accept loss of quality for how old it is, maybe how punk they were and a thousand other reasons. I rather talk about positive things with music than being the eternal critic. That said I really enjoyed high fidelity with john Cusack jack black being in similar situations. Look at albums from 1989-1996 the whole lp world stopped. One major reason was the closing of some 29k small shops as the mall stores took over with selling about as much that you were paying for. All those get togethers just talking music and collecting went by the wayside. Corporations never understood that they were the ones that killed people buying whole catalog of artists. Almost Famous ( or the extended version called "untitled" covered so much about growing up with music in the 70's.

Without getting into a quality debate, I do most listening via FLAC for convenience and the quality. For or flat out reference listening, nothing touches DVD Audio, in my opinion. In fact, SACD is the only thing that comes close. That said, I don’t have much experience with the new BluRay audio formats.

Most listeners who have vintage Carver/Sunfire gear do not have a clean path to integrating streaming into their systems. Vinyl and CDs are most prevalent. Digital (and Streaming) causes all sorts of debates on compression algorithms and delivery methods and what one can/cannot hear in the digital world. I have my CDs in iTunes in ALAC and share iTunes libraries on the home network.

Mostly vinyl, some CD'S, some streaming. I don't have a high-res service I've bought a few tracks from iTunes for reference songs. It's supposed to be a lossless format, but still CD quality not high-res. The player is most important when it comes to playback of CD or digital streaming sources.

Outside Woman Blues Angel O' Mine, Need Her So Bad, Little Wing Fog, Mississippi River Wrong Side Of The Blues, Heart On The Line

Mostly CD's, lots of vinyl, trying to get into the streaming thing...