Linux as your main desktop ?

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Infidelus
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Re: Linux as your main desktop ?

Post by Infidelus »

The Muffin Man wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 8:07 am I have tried [almost] every ripper Linux has to offer since 2006. [except fre:ac]
I used EAC all the time when I was still on Windows, and even had it running via Wine for a while, but eventually started hunting around for replacements and found fre:ac. There are snap/Flatpak and Appimage versions of it (I use the latter). I've ripped my entire CD collection with it and haven't had a problem yet (about 260GB in FLAC files :)).
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Portreve
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Re: Linux as your main desktop ?

Post by Portreve »

My whole music collection is archived as FLAC. All the metadata has been hand-entered, and album art sourced from the largest, original quality images I can find which I then scale down in GIMP to 500x500 since I've found once you get too much bigger than that, you run the risk of incompatibilities.

I use Sound Converter to take the original rips and transcode into FLAC, and EasyTAG to do all the rest. It's wonderful to be completely independent of any online system and to have the capability to transcode my archives into copies in whatever format I need (generally this means MP3).

I also have my movies and TV transcoded generally as h263 MP4s. That among other things makes it easy to grab bits of audio from them (using Audacity) and producing notification and ringtone sounds, or using a combination of VLC, Scribus, and GIMP, I can create memes or do other work, such as using 1984 to have a bit of fun with LMF doing data backups in the middle of the afternoon.
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Re: Linux as your main desktop ?

Post by Hoser Rob »

I have a lot of tunes on FLAC but I convert a lot of them to 320K CBR mp3.

Many if not most recordings just are not that good. It usually depends on how good the mics used in the recording were, and the usual answer to that is not very. The problem with high quality mics is that they're very expensive and also delicate. In the worlds of pro audio very few want to spend a lot of money on something that will probably break if you drop it.

In fact I've converted a couple of ripped CDs to mp3 and they actually sounded better to me. You couldn't hear how bad the mics were so much.

Most all popular music recordings in the last 20 years were compressed to death ... just search "loudness wars" ... to the point they were just ruined sonically. There's nop point keeping those as FLAC because they do not have any low level information to lose by compressing them.
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The Muffin Man
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Re: Linux as your main desktop ?

Post by The Muffin Man »

Auto-Tune
The irony is not lost on me when this was first was used with Cher.
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Re: Linux as your main desktop ?

Post by The Muffin Man »

I use JRiver's Media Center to play/catalog my music. They have a master license (Win, Mac, Linux) for all of my devices and JRMC can act like a server (which I use). I pay since it's a top notch product, plus it can keep up with my collection, which is currently around 25K files. All other players/organizers seem to constantly scan (or worse) while this one can keep up.
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Hoser Rob
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Re: Linux as your main desktop ?

Post by Hoser Rob »

Something I didn't mention above and should have is that the loudness wars ar eover, thanks to streaming. Pretty much all music streaming site I know of do normalization by default. So compressing the life out of recordings is actually counterproductive. Such recordings will actually play less loudly normalized than ones without a lot of compression.

It's great ... old CDs were released for decades by just transferring the vinyl master with all the inherent compression needed for vinyl there. Only the Japanese remastered them properly AFAIK, SHM-CDs are excellent.

So now they're re releasing old tunes without compression for streaming. I have some of that stuff and it's amazing how good it sounds. Some of it I've had for 50 years or more and heard on very good systems. They never sounded as good as the uncompressed new versions. Happy days.
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Re: Linux as your main desktop ?

Post by MurphCID »

Hoser Rob wrote: Tue Nov 22, 2022 11:32 am Something I didn't mention above and should have is that the loudness wars ar eover, thanks to streaming. Pretty much all music streaming site I know of do normalization by default. So compressing the life out of recordings is actually counterproductive. Such recordings will actually play less loudly normalized than ones without a lot of compression.

It's great ... old CDs were released for decades by just transferring the vinyl master with all the inherent compression needed for vinyl there. Only the Japanese remastered them properly AFAIK, SHM-CDs are excellent.

So now they're re releasing old tunes without compression for streaming. I have some of that stuff and it's amazing how good it sounds. Some of it I've had for 50 years or more and heard on very good systems. They never sounded as good as the uncompressed new versions. Happy days.
I notice it on my iPod where some tracks are louder than others, and the ones that are not as loud are older ones I copied from CD.
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Re: Linux as your main desktop ?

Post by tonytiger »

i just started to get back into vinyl records might have to make a spreadsheet for my records.
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Portreve
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Re: Linux as your main desktop ?

Post by Portreve »

I wish I could find the show I was listening to where I heard this (probably a couple years ago or more now)... believe it was on NPR somewhere.

Anyhow, the long and short of it for classic albums made back in the day is this:

You have the original studio recordings. These are typically multi-track recordings. These multi-tracks are then merged down into mono (for really old recordings) or stereo tapes. Now, up to this point, nothing I've said should take anyone by surprise. It's the next phase which is the sticking point.

The original stereo tapes are generally marked as being "Master" or "Studio Master" tapes, which indicates they are what should be used for producing whatever media is desired. However, another tape, also labeled "Master", was created by running the original through whatever I guess used to pass for an equalizer, and this was designed to be compatible with vinyl.

In later years, these incorrect Master tapes were then used to produce cassette tape as well as CD releases, and that's why if you listen to a given album on both vinyl and CD using appropriate amplifier equipment, the vinyl record will sound better.

It's also why what was said here up-thread is the case.

Because people from more modern times know little to nothing about the older vinyl-related studio processes, they will mistakenly use anything labeled "Master" as the master.

The radio program I mentioned above in this post involved interviewing both younger and older studio engineers and having them explain what's going on, and this was in the context of a particular album (a jazz album, if memory serves) and digging through and finding the actual ORIGINAL studio master tape, and then using that as the source for generating CDs.
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Re: Linux as your main desktop ?

Post by tonytiger »

very cool post

i also love npr radio

if you ever get the clip of that show i would love to hear it.

i love playing my cds but i played a bob dylan highway 61 album it sounded fuller to me

the cd still sounds great but it just does not have the fuller effect to my ears
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Re: Linux as your main desktop ?

Post by tonytiger »

i will check out those linux podcats you posted up.

they look great
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Re: Linux as your main desktop ?

Post by vansloneker »

Actually Exact Audio Copy is one reason why I keep a Windows system. I don't read fre:ac doing the same handling of drives and tracks as EAC.
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Re: Linux as your main desktop ?

Post by Petermint »

Linux on notebook, desktop, workstations, and servers since a previous century. Plus Windows when customer hands me a Windows machine for use on site. No Macs. There was one awful project where a whole team of Apple technical specialists tried to get Macs working with iPhones :shock:

On Windows machines, the Microsoft applications were often replaced with open source. Microsoft Project was the last to go. ProjectLibre is so much better.

Mandrake was probably the first user oriented Linux Distribution and it arrived at a time when Microsoft started making Windows difficult.
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Re: Linux as your main desktop ?

Post by BwingBob »

MurphCID wrote: Sat Nov 19, 2022 12:10 pm
I started in 1999 with Mandrake. It was a great distro for the time.
Mandrake was my first foray with Linux as well. I bought the retail version https://pressreleases.responsesource.co ... linux-8-1/. Really weird, I am pretty sure I bought it at Sears!

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Re: Linux as your main desktop ?

Post by Agentl074 »

Absolutely! I still have a Windows machine for my wife's school work since they use lockdown browser; however, I have found both Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Linux Mint 20.3 outperformed Windows 10 by a significant margin while playing the free 3D games online (not Steam). It should be noted, however, that Steam prefers Windows, but if you use many other games, performance should actually be better with Linux -- so this is largely application specific.

All in all, Linux is my personal daily driver -- and has been since 2019.
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Re: Linux as your main desktop ?

Post by Termy »

tonytiger wrote: Fri Nov 18, 2022 6:21 pm [...]
Absolutely, Linux is the only OS on my PC. I've not had Windows installed at home for probably around a decade.
I'm also Terminalforlife on GitHub.
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Re: Linux as your main desktop ?

Post by Petermint »

One of the reasons Windows became the dominant OS was simple, it was so easy to make pirate copies. Then Microsoft introduced restrictions to stop piracy but the restrictions did nothing to slow down pirates, they only created hazards for legal users. I had to reinstall Windows one evening and found I could not without contacting Microsoft support who, at that time, were closed until 8 am. Is the Linux Mint forum support closed until 8 am? No. Is the Internet and the thousands of how-to pages shut overnight? No. The switch was obvious.

At the time, Linux distributions were not that user friendly. I think the Microsoft move to make life difficult for their customers had the effect of pushing more beginners into Linux which helped build more user friendly Linux distributions. Mandrake arrived just after Microsoft first pushed me away from Windows.

Oh, and Microsoft gave me NT Server free for use as a desktop, just like free Linux. This was good training for Linux. NT Server had real software RAID as standard just like Linux. NT had NTFS which was way better than the Windows FAT. When Ext4 arrived, moving from NTFS to Ext4 was a no brainer.

Then Microsoft stopped supplying NT Server for free. Microsoft infected NT with Windows junk named Internet Exploder. Microsoft allowed the fake hybrid RAID in Windows. Microsoft introduced restrictions on use. Mandrake made installs and usage easier. Linux fixed the Ext3 problems with Ext4.

Microsoft -4. Linux +2. The winner is...
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Re: Linux as your main desktop ?

Post by Artim »

I may be the only one at my school who uses Linux exclusively, and successfully get all my schoolwork done without any Microsoft software at all.
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Re: Linux as your main desktop ?

Post by Termy »

Artim wrote: Thu Dec 22, 2022 8:29 am [...]
Nice one! I wish I had that opportunity when I was your age. Maybe you can convert some of your friends to Linux. :lol: You could chat with the school's IT team, on the off-chance they'd be interested in trying out Linux.
I'm also Terminalforlife on GitHub.
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Artim
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Re: Linux as your main desktop ?

Post by Artim »

Termy wrote: Thu Dec 22, 2022 9:04 am
Nice one! I wish I had that opportunity when I was your age. Maybe you can convert some of your friends to Linux. :lol: You could chat with the school's IT team, on the off-chance they'd be interested in trying out Linux.
I haven't "converted" anyone at school yet or really even tried to. But people looking over my shoulder at my laptop think I'm running a Mac since I have my Xfce desktop kinda configured that way. If and when they ask if it's a Mac (since it doesn't have that Apple logo on it), I tell them it's Linux. They act surprised that it isn't a geeky machine that only works in the dreaded ▄︻デȶɛʀʍɨռǟʟ═══━一 instead of a clean point-and-click interface!

There's one other student, a Senior, who runs Linux Mint and has tried unsuccessfully to bring others to Linux.
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