How many music files does the CA Joe Average have?

[Dirgen]

My iTunes library (100% ALAC):

 

Tracks: 51,347

Albums: 3,779

Size: 1,232 GB

 

Should increase substantially once I sort out some tagging problems with previously archived WAV files.

 

I think I have listened to all them once, but mostly in a cursory manner. In fact I must confess that I don't think I really "know" more than about 500 albums. Even for those albums, it would be rare for me to listen to the entire album in a single sitting.

 

I think may people would have noticed but computer based audio is turning music appreciation to a track based experience. Maybe not an important issue for most pop music but quite serious for most classical music. It's like learning English Literature from a book of quotations.

 

[AudioDoctor]

about 15 Million tracks... ;-)

 

I will have a better idea when I finish a project I am working on at the moment.

 

[Gregor Samsa]

According to Foobar

 

I am awaiting the firmware updates from Ayre & Wavelength to play my 2822400 Hz files. Put that in your Nyquist and smoke it.

 

[baxtus]

I have between 70,000 and 100,000 music files with many CD's yet to be encoded.

 

That said, I have actually been reducing my library to only those tracks that I really like and that I would bother listening to repeatedly.

 

I am now down to about 8500 "essential" tracks.

 

I firmly believe that, in the West anyway, there is just too much of everything and that we become numbed, dumbed down and "bewildered and confused" by this excess and, in particular, the "need" to accumulate.

 

Perhaps this revalation for me is part of the ageing process whereby one's finite time must be divided into that which is important and that which is not.

 

[yetibike]

So far,

 

ALAC 3,740 albums 40,924 songs 1.02 TB

 

FLAC 847 albums 9,928 songs 334 GB

 

I dont have the high-res stuff counted up yet.

 

[jbbm]

...i have 7547 tracks.

i also have downloaded a few hd files (two albums from hdtracks, along with their free demo tracks) that are not in itunes... yet.

 

my itunes' library is a mix of alac, aac and a few mp3s... the latter being music that was and still is impossible to find and purchase... except on the old/original napster.

 

i have been slowly re-ripping my previously ripped cds into lossless, as my ipod could be a good way to "bring my music" to hi-fi dealers. and, frankly, because it sounds better. :-)

 

**edit** after a sync, 7563 tracks. one album had been added to itunes in the mean-time...

 

[crisnee]

Baxtus said "I firmly believe that, in the West anyway, there is just too much of everything and that we become numbed, dumbed down and "bewildered and confused" by this excess and, in particular, the "need" to accumulate."

 

Yes Indeedy!

 

I don't have enough tracks to brag about, but too many to listen to. But one thang I know for sure, a lot of them are Schiit.

 

-Chris

 

 

[Paul R]

I firmly believe that, in the West anyway, there is just too much of everything and that we become numbed, dumbed down and "bewildered and confused" by this excess and, in particular, the "need" to accumulate.

 

Pooh Pooh Sir!

 

Someone with a "hoarding" disease is to be pitied, but I strongly doubt they would be a computer audiophile collector. For one thing, they cannot really see what they are collecting. It would be quite unsatisfying. It all just sits on a tiny little disk drive with massive capacity. No muss, no clutter.

 

My parents were from the depression era, and always carried a little bit of fear that such a depression would reoccur. As a result, they disliked spending their money in the extreme. So they would do without. Or buy store brand Mayonnaise instead of Hellman's. Ack!

 

To me, as long as it does not cause a financial hardship, and provides something we really enjoy, and enriches our lives in some way or shape, I am usually not opposed to spending a bit of money.

 

So collect away, listen away, dream away, and enjoy that music!

 

I doubt seriously anyone has too much music. Well okay, that German yodeling thing I donated to the library, that might be too much for anyone...

 

[crisnee]

Dear Sir Paul,

 

I think you may have missed the point. I shall not elaborate, except to say that I don't think it was about spending money or hoarding. It's about having access to too much of everything. The mind boggles, and that ain't a good thang.

 

-Chris

 

[wgscott]

He was pooh-poohing it.

 

I could almost hear the whinnying.

 

 

 

[Paul R]

My Friend Chris -

 

"Boggling" one's mind is a sure cure for apathy, which is one thing far too prevalent in today's world. Rather than numbing one's mind, a bit of boggle is a fuse to ignite passion. All good.

 

Besides, one can always simply turn it off, and read a real paper book or pet the cat. Primitive perhaps, but effective.

 

-Paul

 

 

[crisnee]

Alright, I guess I'm gonna have to get sewious.

 

By the way, I wasn't using boggling in its true sense. I just liked the sound of it at that moment. Sorry, sometimes I can't seem to help myself when it comes to words and the way they sound. What I really meant was kind of bogging down the mind by over stimulating it, or throwing it into a kind of surrender mode by sensory overload.

 

Perhaps I'm the only one that feels the following way. Very many choices sometimes lead me to bagging whatever altogether. When it comes to music it's of little consequence, as I can read a book or pet the pet instead But what if I have very many books and pets? Which pet to pet while reading which reader?

 

And more sewiously. I'm a dilettante in the less admirable sense. I can do a hell of a lot of things pretty well in the arts and other places, but none well enough to be of any consequence to anyone but me and a few friends. Before anyone says "well that's nice isn't it?" Yeah sure it is, but it doesn't work well in this achievement oriented world and since I don't have a sugar momma... I blame it partly on having too many choices--and I know, my psychological makeup.

 

Too many things and choices I think can lead to apathy or anhedonia--if one can't somehow narrow ones interests or one doesn't have a natural propensity to focus on one or two things. I say this because I suffer anhedonia to a degree, and I feel there is a connection with the above thoughts, although of course I can't prove it.

 

-Chris

 

 

 

[Paul R]

But if you really want a serious comment to that, the way you feel is probably pretty good. People who are a bit overwhelmed usually find excellent ways of dealing with information overload, albeit not without some wear and tear on themselves and most everyone around them.

 

It isn't the choices that drag you down, it's knowing that you have all those choices and moreover, you will never have time to explore all of them.

 

But once you accept that you never will be able to take all those choices, it rather opens up a marvelous and wonderful place to inhabit. Never before in human history has anyone ever had the riches we do, at our fingertips. Never.

 

So yeah, it is a bit natural to be put off by that a bit. But it isn't a fault in our natures, hell no! It's just that as individuals (and societies) we have no experience dealing with an environment like this, and we all have to figure it out.

 

As I said in the first paragraph, I think the way you look at it is pretty good. You are liable to be one of the people who figure out how to handle this massive information/choice overload for the rest of us.

 

Down off my soapbox now....

 

-Paul

 

[Guest Caner]

5564 songs all as AIFF files stored in a Synology DS 212 and backed up in an external HDD with 500GB capacity. ~90% ripped, 10% downloaded, few HD files.

 

I have a MBP with a back up SSD (240GB) in optical bay for "critical listening" using FW interface, but these are select, redundant songs.

 

No vinyl.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Chris - Very interesting comments. I've gone through a few phases related to the vast amount of content available while listening to music at home.

 

1. When I first started using music servers I was blown away by how much my music listening habits changed. I started listening to stuff I forgot I'd even purchased. It was great to have "everything" at my fingertips.

 

2. After awhile I started to feel like it was too much choice. I even thought of removing a large part of my music collection. Like I needed some kind of structure or limits on what I could listen to because that's what I was used to. Almost like I needed some scarcity to appreciate the things I had. A phrase came to mind when writing this: If everyone is in charge then no one is in charge. Relating this to having so much musical choice I feel like if I have everything do I really have nothing?

 

3. Currently I can't get enough choice. I have never enjoyed my vast and ever growing selection of music more. I've settled into things nicely. I wonder what this would be like if I never owned thousands of physical discs that had to be placed into a player one at a time. Who knows? On the other hand I did have a wall of CDs in cases. This wall was overwhelming at times. But, I never when through the first two phases above with physical media.

 

 

 

[crisnee]

Chris, Actually I had more of a problem with the physical media. Now that it's all (or almost all) on the computer I breathe easier and listen easier. I did often bag it, when I just couldn't remember what I had (in fact I often rebought cds I already owned).

 

I would often reorganize the cds in different ways. I never found that by composer or group worked well for me so I'd try by type for instance. So say choral music, I'd go there instead of having to figure out who wrote/played choral music. But of course that posed other problems. What if I felt like the Beatles. Were they rock, pop, classic rock yadayada. A nice search engine solves all those problems. Type in chor and voila.

 

But music is really the least of it, when it comes to this issue for me anyway. And Paul I agree that having all the choices is not the problem, it's individual outlook/psychological makeup. I'm afraid mine just wasn't made for this type of world. I mean it is weird to feel one minute there's so much, and the next, there's nothing. I'm not complaining, by the way. I'm just sayin. And although the topic I'm raising may sound serious, I'm rarely really serious in a humorless sort of way, here or anywhere. "Sewious," in case anyone wondered, is my allusion to Bugs Bunny, to show how sewious I really am.

 

Paul, I hope you agree with me on this, sewiously I do. When you go to your local Rite-Aid or Walgreens or whatever you have in the way of drugstores in your part of the world and you step into the shampoo aisle, you say to yourself, boy I sure do wish they had one less type of shampoo.

 

-Chris

 

 

[PeterSt]

Yea, what to say ? I must be a collector of some sort.

I can't say I have that many albums because I listen to them all, but there sure is something in it like crisnee has a complaint somewhere, and now it's mighty handy when I can dig up the particular album instantly.

 

What I use the "collection" for will be merely about jumping from the one music type to the other. That "type" could be anything, like for instance the late 60's; to find similarities one really must have a couple of 100 of those, or otherwise you will be stuck with the Moody Blues which may not be your music of the day.

 

Of course this is from a more "professional" angle, but I think it is of high value to me. I notice this almost daily.

Otherwise ? otherwise I have a collection of "Nice Stuff" into which I can bump an album with one keystroke during playback, and that "Gallery" now contains 218 albums I think. Collected over the past 4-5 years. That ain't much ...

 

Those 218 merely are albums which throughout interest me. Sadly, this is not about the music content but (again) about the sonic quality of them. How they excel over all the others.

 

Then there's my "demo" Gallery which contains around a 100 tracks and or they are superbly sounding thingies, or they are subject to improvement (think software, think DAC).

When this would be about superbly sounding only, those 100 ain't much. Otoh this would be about "you never heard such a thing your life", so it is really exquise.

 

Where I use the special Galleries to not forget the particilar albums/tracks, I may have a couple of hundred others just on top of my head. They don't need to be in special list; the Led Zeppelins, Doors, Pink Floyds, etc. etc., or the Kralls for something always subject to improvement.

 

This leaves me with over 29000 albums which are there to be there. Not really, because when someone comes up with Talking Heads it's in there. Dooby Brothers also. Desmond Dekker. Ray Charles. Grand Canyon Suite. Rhoda Scott. Russian Choir. Abba. Or Maple Shade, Turtle, Chesky.

A wealth of.

Overdone.

 

[Paul R]

@Chris

 

Paul, I hope you agree with me on this, sewiously I do. When you go to your local Rite-Aid or Walgreens or whatever you have in the way of drugstores in your part of the world and you step into the shampoo aisle, you say to yourself, boy I sure do wish they had one less type of shampoo.

 

Totally different personality type. I enjoy browsing around through a bunch of choices.

 

However, I have to admit, I have settled on a special shampoo that has no fragrance at all in it. Once we found that and liked it, I just order it off Amazon when we get close to running out... takes about 60 seconds.

 

Same thing with special teas we like, air conditioner filters, and a lot of other things. We really work that Amazon Prime thing.

 

-Paul

 

 

[Akapod]

2300 artists

 

99% ALAC/AIFF

a few hi-res

a few AAC

a few records and tapes converted to digital

 

1.4 TB

 

Everything has been listened to once, but it's been a long time since I've listened to many of these tracks.

 

[krass]

which is about 560 albums.

95% ripped from CD at 16/44k. Of the rest just a few VBR MP3 and about 20-30 albums at higher res, either 24/44k or 24/48, 24/96.

 

I must confess that this includes The Little See Mermaid and some Disney classics

 

[crisnee]

Good move Paul on the Amazon Prime thing; a good solution to a looming problem indeed. So I bet if you'd not outsmarted the "too much of a mediocre thing," plague, you'd agree with me. Picture having to find that nameless odorless plain package stuck behind the glam bottles shampoo every time you went to the drugstore (which of course had been renovated and reconfigured for your convenience since last you'd gone to...)

 

Here's an elitist or true music lovers argument for a lot being too much when it comes to cds.

 

Say you have 5000 cds (not an unreasonably huge number by any means for this argument). Take a five year period during which you have them all the whole time. Let's say they last an hour per (for convenience). If you listen to each cd once = 5000 hours. 360/5000 = 13.8 divided by 5 = about 2.8 hours of listening per day, just to hear each cd once.

 

So you have to listen to your music approximately 3 hours a day just to hear each cd in your collection once every five years. Now if that's all you did listening-wise you'd be considered a dabbler, at best, when it comes to music appreciation.

 

I find that when it comes to music of some quality (I'm not talking the best of the best) you have to listen to it at least several times to begin to really appreciate it; and for me anyway, I've sometimes thought I didn't like something at all, only to come back to it later and wonder what I was thinking.

 

And when it comes to music I really appreciate, be it classical, rock, folk or jazz, I listen to it for many many hours, upwards of 25 certainly in a five year period and some way upwards.

 

I rest my case. (I just wanted to say that--I'll go on now)

 

So, I probably have about 5000 cds worth of music, and I've accumulated it over more than five years. I have by no means listened to all of it, and given much of it short shrift. And I still buy more though I'm near broke.

 

What would Aaron Copland say? (He wrote a classic on how to listen to music.) You're listening with your eyes Chris? Are you trying to see how much you can imbibe in a lifetime Chris? Are you lonely Chris?

 

In my defense, I did read his book.

 

Most of us I think spend less time listening to music than it takes the composers to write it and perfect it for our consumption. Something seems wrong with that picture. But then I said this was an elitist view.

 

Please as always, the pathetic sounding parts only sound that way because I wrote them that way; and the same goes for the sewious, elitist and goofy parts.

 

-Chris

 

 

 

[Teresa]

Although it has grown from 870 tracks to 888.

 

Others mentioned how many artists and albums they had so perhaps I should add that as well.

 

I have 181 Albums (some single songs, some partial albums and most complete albums) by 137 artists.

 

All are 24 bit from SACDs, DVD-Audios, LPs and high resolution downloads.

 

When I get new music I usually listen to it 4 or 5 times and then I put it in alphabetical rotation. Except for new music I listen to all music alphabetically. With SACDs and DVD-Audios I slightly pull out the next disc to listen to so I can go right to it when it is time to play a physical disc. With the computer I write down the next track to play on a piece of paper I keep by the computer. The reason I'm mentioning all this is that I have heard everything I own at least five times and it takes me less than two months to play all the music I own.

 

I have no idea how I would handle 5,000 or even 50,000 tracks, I don't think I could.

 

I once owned over 350 SACDs and that was way too many for me as it took too long to play my entire collection, thus I went through and purged it down to an acceptable size to me.

 

I went to alphabetical listening in my teens. Don't laugh, my first stereo was a Realistic (Radio Shack) 8-Track player/amp with two separate speakers. My 8-Track cartridge collection was growing and it was over 50 great titles, I had an hour to listen to music and I was flipping through my tapes and couldn't decide which one to listen to, I wanted to hear all 50 and that was just not possible, by the time I picked one I only had 15 minutes left and I didn't like the dead air while I was choosing. So then and there I decided that since I love all my recordings I would listen in the most fair way possible, alphabetically. Thus nothing ever goes unplayed.

 

[Rob McCance]

I have 300 albums, all ripped Apple Lossless from CDs.

 

 

 

[crisnee]

Teresa, that is truly a novel way to listen to your music, alphabetically that is, pretty cool. When you first mentioned it in your post I thought I was misunderstanding you, and had made a mental note to go back and see if I'd read you correctly.

 

Then you mentioned it again, and I didn't have to--go back.

 

Even though I have way too much music (as I mentioned earlier) I tend to listen to certain albums over and over and leave much of the rest of my collection to fester in silence. Every once in a while I peruse my collection and listen to stuff I haven't heard or have forgotten the sound of. Occasionally I'll find a new favorite, but mostly I'll just go back to my standbys. In a sense I feel much the same as you do, I just hadn't thought of your methodology.

 

I contain one key difference in my makeup; I have this nagging feeling I'm missing something if I don't sample all existing music (Partly this stems from the fact that I truly love some music and could hardly imagine my life without it, and I wouldn't want to miss any of which I'm not yet aware of; and partly it's probably because of some collector's neurosis) so I accumulate more than I can truly sample.

 

Fortunately I've discovered MOG very recently, thanks to Chris, and now it's much easier to sample and by-pass.

 

Thanks for sharing your ways Teresa, I love stuff like that. Oh and by the way, three of my life's highlights concerning music I love, came through pretty "poor" in audiophile terms, systems. Feel free to laugh.

 

Jefferson Airplane "Surrealistic Pillow," on an old mono, as I watched paisley elephants dance to the music of "3/5 of a Mile," etc. with the help of some...

 

Big Brother and the Holding Co, "Summertime," etc. on a Motorola or Magnavox Box Changer.

 

Bach, Mass in B Minor, Seraphim recording on my first Stereo System from Lafayette Electronics.

 

To my ears they sounded as good as anything I've heard since, at least in terms of musical involvement. I couldn't have been involved and loved the music more. How else would it still stand out in my memory 40 years later? Which makes me wonder a little when we say, well this system is not very involving. Maybe WE'RE not very involved, but that's another topic.

 

-Chris

 

 

[PeterSt]

When I was younger, at some stage my job was some 90 miles away, and I owned something like 450 music cassettes. Somewhat later they were replaced with DAT tapes;

 

Obviously the tapes were numbered, and I forced myself to play them one by one in the car. Never skipped a single one. An agreement with myself to just don't pick the nicest and listen to the same always.

What I recall is that they turned over in about a year. Something like 2 hours travel per day at 240 working days per year, so that would be quite correct.

 

Peter