Every day! Actually, I learned to listen to music since I have my treasure chest of musical awesomeness. Also, my library music put down my "commercial music consumption" to maybe 5% or so.
Never before did I ditch PC and TV to go to bed with my headphones and my tablet (for the cover art^^) and listen. Since I can't move with the headphones, I kind of lie like a mummy and I get into a tunnel where I concentrate on everything. Realizing a sudden shaker on the left channel or when a bass guitar could not be pulled properly and has that one note being off a bit is just priceless.
I use MP3 V0. That is 256-320 kBit/s with no lowpass filter (even it filters at about 20kHz) as a standard. MP3s are hyper compatible and thus don't ever need to transcoded (unlike AAC which can't be read by everything due to licensing problems - Audacity for example can't without a more-or-less shady plugin and my video editor from MAGIX wants a 4€ codec package) and it's a perfectly fine HiFi format. I think I said enough about that topic in the past. It also keeps my collection very reasonable in size despite a total of 12 TByte of disk space, but as digital native, I have everything media in files instead of media.
The music I collect is hand-selected. Each track is there because it is good. Sometimes, I pull one track out of 5 disks, but if it does not click, it simply does not.
When it comes to managing my files, it's simple: I set out a few rules.
* Two foldersOne folder contains all my music where I know the release year (with ± 1 year difference allowed) and the other where I can confirm they are from the 1980s or 1990s.
* Instrumental tracks and movie soundtracks are allowedIt's not all library that I have but also instrumental music that I buy from Quboz. The great Harold Faltermeyer sountracks of "Fletch Lives" and Eric Serra's awesomeness from "Nikita" or "Subway" are equally a part like instrumental of "Zo vrolijk" by Hermann van Veen that I search for since my teacher had it in school in 1998..
* Important tagsCertain things about my files are more important than others. But to keep data integrity, I need a certain threshold. No "Track04" like back then (I still get shivers from the CDs a friend brought over that had 500 tracks named "TITLE_1_02.MP3" and you didn't know what that is. Or from who. Let alone cover arts...).
NAME = The title of the track is not necessary if I have at least the album name.
INTERPRET/COMPOSER= Not important if I have the album and the library (with all the aliasses around it's a bit useless anyways)
LABEL and ALBUM = Very important. Because if I lack the name of the track and/or composer I can still call it "ESL PRODUCTION".
YEAR OF RELASE = This is also important, but I allow one year off. That comes from two things. Sometimes, you don't have a release year like the ATMOSPHERE LPs and I need to make an educated guess, like I know e.g. #15 is from 1985 but #23 is unknown, I put 1987, as they started to move over to CD in 1987. That includes 1986 - a possible year as well. Sometimes, they don't even know when they released their music:
COVER ART = This is a big part of the enjoyment to me. The music and the artwork are both part of a very certain era and should go together. Often I look on Youtube, Spotify, Amazon (they have had high-res scans of the KOKA CDs) eBay and the likes for different photos. E.g. many disks on Discogs have the licensing sticker on them (mostly SONOTON) while the others don't have that. I am also aware of the re-issues that I need to rule out.
Sometimes it's technically right, but then not, like the OGM reissues...
Usually, with all the information, I take the information that is both true but can also be "a bit wrong", e.g. I used to have the BOOSEY AND HAWKES "SYNTHESIZER" tracks labelled as the CAVENDISH CD they are from ("We have the Technology") until I learned about the re-issue and corrected that information. It irks me somewhat, but refining my collection to the latest knewn data to me.
With these tags in place, they finally find their place on my disks and devices (which I cross-backup every so often).
The reason why I went with these tags is simple. Sometimes, you have a MediaPlayer that is customizable and plays all the information you want or your OS' file program such as the Finder or Explorer. One of such players is good ol' Winamp:
But then your car stereo, your HiFi or your smartTV might not and omit some tags. Mostly for my SAMSUNG TV I went for the "LABEL - ALBUM" string:
(The built-in player of the SAMSUNG TVs sometimes won't read the cover art, as seen with "Yellow Danger" in the corner. Don't know, maybe the newer models do not bitch around like that
)
Owning a collection of such a music complete with all the tags is just such a satisfaction and joy
Don't tell anyone but I even have some old mono recordings at 96kbps!!
Don't forget that a mono @ 96 kBit/s equals to a stereo @ 192 kBit/s as it's half of the channels and thus can be halved compared to stereo audio. So despite it being a mixdown, it might sound very good (as MP3 reaches it's perceived transparency at 192 kBit/s as many ABX listening tests showed. Audacity uses 192 kBit/s as default by the way)
