psu_13

I have actually had a few CDs go bad on me. I lost at least one disk in my highly treasured Art Blakey Mosaic set... which I had not ripped in high quality. But I managed to find a lossless rip in the Intertubes so I could download a playable version of the album. That was lucky. I think in the long term hard disk storage + backups might be more durable than CDs, as long as someone keeps making the backups.

I started ripping a lot of my CDs years ago and got maybe around half way through. At some point I got to the stuff that for one reason or another I just don't listen to that much, and then it all showed up on Spotify and Apple Music so I stopped. I still immediately rip new purchases though. I personally can't hear a big difference, if any, between 256K AAC and the various lossless formats. I still rip CDs lossless for "archival" purposes. Whatever that means.

It seems to have just disappeared?

No lossless. Standard iTunes downloads. I suspect that the companies from which Mosaic licensed the original recordings are packaging these things up. A lot of them are in the streaming services too.

This caught my eye: 31. Roscoe Mitchell Quartet, Celebrating Fred Anderson (Nessa). 49 (7)

I like the Rilling set, and tend to lean away from HIP type recordings ... but Gardiner has a more recent series of live recordings recorded over a year in various locales that is pretty compelling. If you really want to explore this material it's a great excuse to sign up for Spotify or Apple Music and stream a bunch of it to see what you like. Most of the major sets are in those services, including the entire Rilling Complete Bach boxed set.

http://audioengineusa.com/Store/A2-plus-B-Powered-Desktop-Speakers Note: I don't think the Airport Express has any audio out via USB.

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I don't think they are any more limited than other small speaker systems, but I am not much of a bass enthusiast. I enjoy the fact that they are self-powered so I don't have to fuss with yet another box in my life. I have the A5s set up downstairs on my TV and they have more oomph, but are much larger.

There's these http://www.kef.com/html/us/showroom/digital_music_solutions/x_300a/x_300aw/index.html $$$ Most others I've seen are a single box, so no stereo really.

I've not found good ones that are also not expensive. Personally I use the Audio Engine A2 (the small ones) and then just hook them up to an Apple Airport Express or the last gen Apple TV. Great speakers, and the airplay box is not too expensive (about the same as the upcharge for airplay speakers)

FWIW, ASMF is perfectly fine and have made very many perfectly find CDs. I see no reason to judge anyone's taste or lack thereof based on their opinion of any single group or recording or live performance. There are too many variables involved to be hasty about these things. My personal peeve is "historically informed performance" or whatever they are calling those groups who play on old instruments that mostly sound awful. But even there, there are some groups who fall into that category (Apollo's Fire comes to mind) who are really good. So ... I've lost my train of thought. But I think what I meant to say was "do not write off your opinions just because they are your own, you might know/think better than most".

In college, the Amadeus film also caused me to connect to Mozart in a way that I had not before. It was the opera scenes in particular. It's easy to write Mozart off as just so much pretty tinkling, esp. these days when people seem more interested in music that is either older or newer. But IMHO if you do that you are missing out on a lot. Also, don't sleep on Haydn. ?

I came across this download today, it seems to be a mashup of multiple sessions that are now out of copyright, but I can't find them all... anyone know what they are? http://www.amazon.com/Money-Maker-Quit-Go-Traveling/dp/B014871IRE/ Thanks a bunch Pete

One of my old favorite records is the ASMF Brandenburg concertos from the 70s. As has been mentioned it is not in line stylistically with what is more popular now, but I am not all that enthusiastic about the current performance styles, in general. On the other hand, there is a "period" group in Cleveland called Apollo's Fire that I can get behind. If you have a Spotify or Apple Music account you can probably compare their performances with the older recording. Actually I bet you can do so on youtube as well... Ah yes ASMF: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7BMf96xT0Q Apollo's Fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtIJvA2f1U and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrqP9lm_B9c They are not actually as different as I remembered ... I guess that makes sense since I like them both. ? The second tends to be a bit less stiff, and a little more improvisational. Anyway, the other point I was going to make was that it sometimes a particular performance by a particular band of a particular piece on a particular night just doesn't connect. Classical music (and especially music from the classical period ... Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, etc) sometimes has an emotional distance and level of abstraction that keeps it from really getting under your brain unless the conditions are optimal. I've certainly had this experience more than once. Part of the game, I guess.

NAS is an acronym that stands for "network attached storage". Basically any sort of disk storage that you use a network interface to talk to instead of some other hardware interface. In some sense it's just a fancy name for a file server, but in some contexts its a bit different.

These also seem to turn up with surprising frequency in the U.S. iTunes/Amazon/Spotify databases, even though the recordings are theoretically not out of copyright yet. Ah well.

The Max Roach Mercury set ... but via iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/complete-mercury-sessions/id490278697

Complete quartets by the Angeles. I find these nice, so far. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007CW2FGG

The big box is worthwhile IMHO. I think I had bought the Dvorak set and ripped it, and then noticed that the larger collection was in the iTunes store ... and bought the download. Ah well.

That Stamitz set is great. BTW. You can also get it by download and at the major streaming sites.

I enjoyed this set. http://www.amazon.com/Haydn-Sonatas-Concertos-Anne-Marie-McDermott/dp/B00PNQNEKE/

I've noticed that you can often get a lot of the material that's in the Mosaic boxes at the various download or streaming places if you just want to listen to it and are not so concerned with the other trappings of a Mosaic boxed set. I tend to play everything through my computer anyway, so I only pick up "hard copy" of things that I can't find anywhere else and for which I really want the documentation and what not. Apropos of nothing: high quality downloads or streaming combined with LP packaging would be a neat thing.

At the Louvre in the evening. Downtown Pittsburgh in the morning.

IMHO the LOTR adaptation is generally stronger (Fellowship in particular, TTT and ROTK less so) in many ways than the novels. But mostly if you are interested in the main thread of the story, rather than all of the auxiliary background and digressions. This opinion is somewhat heretical in some circles.