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Thinking of giving up physical media?

Would you ever give up physical media for streaming? Streaming service or local files

  • yes, I would consider giving up All physical media and streaming only

    Votes: 18 35.3%

  • No way! I will be buried with my vinyl and CDs and tapes!

    Votes: 33 64.7%
  • Total voters
    51
Hawkeye83 said:
I'm quite certain there are probably numerous threads out there already.
Talk me into - or out of - giving up my physical media.

Pros of keeping physical media (vinyl and CD)
- it's "mine forever"
- it's an "anchoring point"...having the physical media "reminds" me to listen to this album or that one, every so often.
- it sounds good
- it's simple. put it on and push play
- it forces you to listen to an album in its entirety
- it's Spotify-controversy-proof - I can still listen to Neil Young!.
Click to expand...

Streaming can sound good with hi res and lossless being available on many services.

I think streaming is easier than handling physical media especially if you have more than one system or want to listen while running/walking.

The Neil Young situation is a bit specific, but he is available elsewhere. In the case of some artists, you can't find them on any service, but that number is shrinking. In those cases, it makes sense to buy the CD and rip it. With Apple Music, as one example, you can then load that up to their service and have it available regardless. I haven't had to do that in years, though.

The other way to look at it is that if you have a large library, you still aren't getting close to what is available on streaming services... 70 million songs. Much more selection.

Personally, I have mix of physical media and still enjoy playing records, but if I had to drop physical media or streaming media, it would be an easy choice. Streaming is just more convenient and the library is bigger than what I could every put together.
 
Hawkeye83 said:
Was using Exact Audio Copy but I think it only does lossless like WAV?
Click to expand...

No. EAC will rip to WAV, or compress using whatever compressor you tell it to. There are two 'action buttons' in the LH menu. 'WAV' rips to WAV. 'CMP' rips and then compresses.

The latest EAC will run two compressors, e.g. to FLAC and AAC.

Worried about the space? You have a 4TB NAS with 2TB free. 500 CDs will take up about 150GB as FLAC.

HDDs are cheap. I should have picked up a 10TB IronWolf drive for £170 recently, but didn't pull my finger out in time...

I upgraded one of my WD My Cloud NAS from 2 to 6 TB not that long ago.
 
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cpt_paranoia said:
No. EAC will rip to WAV, or compress using whatever compressor you tell it to. There are two 'action buttons' in the LH menu. 'WAV' rips to WAV. 'CMP' rips and then compresses.

The latest EAC will run two compressors, e.g. to FLAC and AAC.
Click to expand...

Okay I'll have to try this again. I have tried getting it to rip to a compressed file but have not figured it out yet. Will report back whether I figure it out or not.
So far I've had to rip to WAV and then convert to mp3 if desired, using a different program. Really stupid and annoying.
 
I have recently been exploring streaming, but I use it mostly to test listen material and save it to R2R tape or buy the vinyl if I so desire. FWIW
Regards,
Jim
 
If when you install EAC and you run the entire configuration/setup it presents many options for customizing it the way you want. I do a full configuration whenever I install/re-install EAC. For me, it automatically rips to FLAC to a directory I specified.
 
I stream.
Endless Library
Cheaper than media
No storage needed
Access by talking into my remote
Lyrics on the tv screen
Ultra HD becoming more popular
The ability to listen to something new


What's not to like?
 
Hawkeye83 said:
Okay I'll have to try this again. I have tried getting it to rip to a compressed file but have not figured it out yet. Will report back whether I figure it out or not..
Click to expand...
You have to download and configure the FLAC processor. Which is one of the reasons why I use dbPoweramp.
 
EAC automatically downloads and configures the FLAC processor if you run the entire configuration setup. It also allows for the selection of the metadata provider. Besides, dbPoweramp is not free EAC is.:D
 
JoeESP9 said:
Besides, dbPoweramp is not free EAC is.
Click to expand...
I only wish I had started using dbPoweramp earlier in the process as its multi-threaded operation (simultaneously reading next track while encoding current one) would have saved me a lot of time!

As they say, time is money.
 
I'm woking on this as we speak. I am ripping all my CDs to FLAC files, then putting them in storage with my primary CD player. DVDs also.

I'll keep it all for licensing reasons and future use.
 
SiliconTi said:
I'm woking on this as we speak. I am ripping all my CDs to FLAC files, then putting them in storage with my primary CD player. DVDs also.

I'll keep it all for licensing reasons and future use.
Click to expand...
After ripping mine, I ended up throwing out all the jewel cases and putting the CDs in CD wallets that hold around 500 discs each. I still have some SACDs/DVD-As and boxed sets out, but everything else is in a closet. The vinyl, of course, is out, but I have a lot less records than CDs, so they just fill the lower shelf on our bookcase.
 
Hawkeye - You might try switching over without dumping your physical media. Give it a trial run for a fair period of time. See what you think.
 
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