Time and tides wait for no man, as Chaucer said, and I still haven’t conquered my fear of new photo processing software, or indeed tried to play with it at all. In my defence, I haven’t been feeling great recently, and I hate this time of year too, and am always surprised that I am surprised by how quickly ‘light when I go to sleep and light when I wake up’ turns into ‘dark at both ends of my day’ (my waking hours being considerably shorter than most people’s anyway).
I’m still frustrated by new cars not having CD players as digital radio coverage when travelling is absolutely rubbish across the north, even on major roads, and despite having FM tunings for radio stations programmed in as well, the car simply ignores them, immediately reverting to the non-functioning DAB version of any FM station that you attempt to manually choose.
I have always disliked digital versions of music as they don’t sound ‘right’ to me, and we still both have not only all our original vinyl (LPs and singles), CDs and (in Mr BW’s case), tapes, but the the means to play them as well. Hardware from the olden days (Sony and Technics), so that our music still sounds as good as it ever did, especially in rooms with wooden floors. And yes, I know that CDs are, strictly speaking, ‘digital’, but they don’t sound as ‘digital’ as MP3 digital. I once knew why this was, but I don’t any more and I CBATG.
I am on my third or fourth version of a few favourite CDs though – Steve Earle (Copperhead Road), Joan Armatrading (the very best of), Bruce Springsteen (The River), Tracy Chapman (Greatest Hits), Eagles (Hotel California) – and I can confirm that the new ones definitely don’t last as long as the original ones.
I still only have one digital track, TMBG’s ‘Birdhouse in your soul’, but only because someone once sent it to me by email.
Amazon used to let you have a digital version of anything you’d ever bought as a hard copy this millennium, but they don’t seem to do this any more unless you pay £11.99 a month for Amazon Music. Rufus told me that they do, but then gave me a link to a ‘page not found’. AI might be useful one day, but that day is definitely not yet. At least they now put disclaimers at the bottom of most AI summaries (although I’d wager that most people won’t ever see or read that, let alone take any notice of it).
I have some USB sticks that I use for audiobooks, and suspect that there must be an easy way to get CDs into digital form that I could then put onto them to play in the car when the DAB is playing up? I used to have a piece of software (on CD) to rip music tracks, but I never used it, and, as it was for Windows 95, I doubt it would work these days. We do still have an external DVD/CD drive that I can plug into my desktop PC, should anyone have any ideas of appropriate software?
I am happy to be the dinosauriest blogger in the village, and suspect that most of you probably have thousands of digital tracks on your smartphones that you can send (or is that ‘cast’?) to your in-car entertainment panels, but for this week’s Friday Question, I would like to know if anyone else still has their original physical format music, and original hardware to play it on?
mikeS
No use to you in your car, but I still have quarter inch tapes that I recorded in 1959. And machines to play them on. But I admit that digital copies are in my phone. I suspect you would find M4A format more pleasant than MP3
Mr BW
Well I have Mildred’s ‘iplayer’ wind up gramophone and 78s, including ‘My Little Austin 7’ recorded in 1928.
Mr BW
And I still have my box of 45s. My crush of my teen years was on Toyah. I decorated my 45 box with Toyah’s signature using my glow in the dark fishing float paint which I used to make my own floats.
Debster
You can*ahem* convert YouTube to MP3 and choose how good you want the quality. CD ripper programmes are easy to use but if you sing along then you won’t notice the quality so much. Plus I’m sure you can get a usb CD player for the car?
Debster
And yes I’ve got loads of records and two record players and decent speakers. I still use the usb thingy in the car though or listen to the radio on Planet Rock or Kisstory.
Debster
Try audiograbber or exact copy. Both should be free.
Debster
Or send me a blank USB stick and you can have a copy of my crap.
Mike Roberts
Still have all our original vinyl, but 2 of 3 turntables no longer function.
Ian
Yes, I still have my original format music; a few records and many more CDs, and also the equipment to play them on. Although the power supply for the record player has gone AWOL in the last house move.
I hoover up CDs from charity shops for next to nothing; the ability of streaming companies to decide they’ll stop sharing a particular title on a whim means you’ll have to prise my physical media from my cold dead hands
delcatto
Some LP’s left and an old cheap record player which occasionally gets dusted off.
I bought a new CD player since I terminated my contract with Spotify and dusted off my collection of CD’s. I will haunt the local charity shops for ‘new’ CD’s and DVD’s as I can then choose what I listen to / watch.