How are you listening today?

[LWJ]

Perhaps just as important as the "What are you listening to today?" mega-thread, is how.

I ask because Mrs. LWJ floated that she wants to take MY office space and turn it into HER space. Which means, that I get to grab her old space as mine. Considering that I have only had a garage to call my own space in the 32 years we have been married, I started to dream about what that could mean. It could mean that I could have my own sound system. So I hopped right on that. While we have many options for music and AV at home, they are all in public or shared spaces.

I grabbed a mid-level receiver from a pawnshop and brought it home. I had an old pair of speakers that I had always liked but never got around to discarding and what do you know? I have tunes in my office. I was sort of up in the air about sources to feed to my receiver, and intend to get a turntable and some vinyl. But for now, the pawnshop had demo'ed the receiver with streaming from Tidal. And it sounded very good.

Which brings me to my point. I plugged my Macbook Air into the receiver and streamed Dark Side of the Moon straight from Youtube. And got the shivers. This is supposed to be a low quality source, so more research is needed.

Which begs the question: How are you listening today?

[rwest]

I still buy CDs and then put them into iTunes uncompressed and onto my iPods uncompressed if possible- a couple have low storage GBs, so I have to compress, but those are used when I run or bike ride, so fidelity is limited by cheap ear phones.

In the house and Porsche, those iPods have plenty of gigs, so no compression.

Can I tell the difference, I kind of doubt it, but I think it sounds better and I’m the one listening.

CDs can be had for fairly cheap and then I own the music and am not beholden to the whims of the online content providers.

[GH85Carrera]

In my garage I have my wife's really old iPad and I listen to Pandora over the WiFi through some computer speakers with a sub woofer. It really sounds pretty good. Plenty loud enough that if ZZ Top's La Grange or Deep Purple's live version of Highway Star comes on my wife will yell at me to turn it down from inside the house.

At my home office, at my computer where I spend most of my day listening to Pandora through higher end computer speakers with a sub woofer. I only get to crank in up when she is gone. But it sounds great.

I do have a multimedia amps hooked to Boston Acoustics speakers and a surround sound system and when I watch TV movies I enjoy the surround sound. I can use it to play CDs or listen to the cable TV music channel.

I really like Pandora. They have learned my music choices and I have it on deep cuts, so it throws out songs I don't own and enjoy.

In both cars II have head units that play a USB thumb drive with minimum compression, maximum quality MP3s of my collection of 140 CDs. They both play at random so I may get the Moody Blues, or Metallica. If I don't want to hear a particular song, pole a button and it goes to the next song.

Both cars are noisy enough that is more than good enough for rock and roll.

In the living room we have a nice surround sound system. But my wife never wants to crank up the volume to get the full experience of the surround sound. It is cool to hear a car go past from left to right on right between the room and off into the distance. If the wife is gone, I get to have fun listing to it.

[Chocaholic]

Don’t get me started…

[dad911]

I have a google device in the garage, and just have to yell "Hey google, play some stones"

[HobieMarty]

At home I listen to music either through over the ear wireless headphones paired up to my phone or through my Harmon Kardon soundbar and sub when on the treadmill in my den. The old Lexus I drive has a cassette player and a cd changer so I listen to those when not listening to the good ol FM, no static at all!!!

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

[JackDidley]

I bring up Youtube on my smart tv and thats what I use for tunes. I do have a sound bar also. My hearing is not good enough to know the difference n good or bad speakers.

[aschen]

We do this frequently, I think so many of us like nice stereo.

My listening media is Youtube, LPs, and TIdal high rez streaming. In that order basically.

I love listening to music on youtube, mostly because I am watching too. THe audio isnt state of the art but is often good enough. I LOVE tiny desk concerts, watching them constantly. The audio engineering is fantastic, I would kick a puppy to have them all in higher resolution format. Ok maybe not a puppy but Id love to have those concerts in higher fidelity.

[Dixie]

I have a simple setup. It's an Onkyo TX8160, a pair of Klipsch RF620Fs & KW100 sub, Spotify, and an inexpensive Chinese turntable.

[stevej37]

I use Alexa indoors. Need a certain song...just tell her. Otherwise, I just tell her to play Sirius XM and the channel I want.

[LWJ]

Hey Aschen (or anyone else)

For YT streaming is a premium subscription the only way to dodge ads?

I have DSOTM on YT now but almost everything else has nasty ads in the middle.

Probably need to step up to Tidal I am thinking.