Music Streamer/DACs (1 Viewer)

[jcroy]

I have no idea why video files are being brought up here. These are music only players, and heat simply is not a problem.

Even if there's no video data, I've found that some older players will not even play general purpose containers like mkv, flv, webm, mp4, vob, etc ... with only encoded audio data. Some players don't even know how to play ogg encoded audio data, or later audio codecs like opus. (Audio is encoded as opus on youtube).

The only way I found around this non-playability issue on older standalone players, is to just convert the audio data into generic 48/16 pcm data and into *.wav file.


If I was ever hardcore into the ripping the higher resolution layers of sacd audio discs, it would involve dealing with the DSD encoded audio data. If a standalone player doesn't know how to process dsd data, then I would likely end up just converting it into a pcm *.wav file at a higher resolution (such as 96 or 192 kHz samping at 24 bits).

Direct Stream Digital - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[JohnRice]

It's...

Not...

Pertinent...

And I've never heard of audio only files being put into an .mkv container. Maybe using a traditional audio file format would make more sense.

 

[jcroy]

And I've never heard of audio only files being put into an .mkv container. Maybe using a traditional audio file format would make more sense.

Back in the day, I was using mkv extensively for audio cd rips. In those days, I usually ripped the entire cd disc into one giant file *.wav and and also dumped the *.cue sheet information. The cue sheet tells you where each track starts/ends and things like gaps between tracks.

At the time, mkv was the easiest format which could incorporate the *.cue sheet information. So the skip-forward or skip-backward functions on software players (such as vlc or foobar), would function just like a standard old style cd player.

 

[JohnRice]

Maybe it's time to join the 21st Century.

We're a few years into it already.

 

[jcroy]

Nowadays I don't even bother buying the cd versions anymore, if I'm only going to be listening to it once or twice.

The few times I had access to a cambridge player at an acquaintence's residence, we ended up just downloading the tracks from youtube and converting the opus encoded data into 48/16 pcm *.wav files. We were listening to such albums on the standalone stereo via the cambridge player, largely to see whether it was worthwhile to purchase the cd later.

Out of every 10 albums or so we listened to in this manner, I only ended up ever buying one cd album out of the batch.

 

[JohnRice]

Downloading music from YouTube?!?

You’re killing me.

 

[jcroy]

Downloading music from YouTube?!?

You’re killing me.

I didn't know how to do it at first. My acquaintence figured out how to do it by hand.

 

[jcroy]

This was mostly before the pandemic.

Though once the pandemic happened and I was at home more often, I ended up mostly listening to music on youtube using the crappy speakers on the computer. I came to the realization it was a waste of time trying to "download" music from youtube, especially when I find out that an album has no replay value for me after listening to it once (or twice).

The same can be said of the few sacd discs I have, where it is just too much effort to rip the DSD high resolution audio layer (via a PS3 hack), for stuff I only ever listened to 2 or 3 times with no subsequent replay value.

Whenever I do come across an album on youtube which has significant replay value for me, I'll play the youtube clip through my standalone stereo via an old laptop connect to the stereo. (The video is not too interesting, which is usually just a still static image of the album's cover artwork). I'll listen to it several more times on my standalone stereo with my full attention, to see whether it is something which I might want to later buy on cd. Typically if I'm willing to sit down and listen to the album with my full attention, at least a dozen times or more.