Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with music and cd

Scratch n' Skip

cmoj — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 14:48:23 -0800

I have SRV mp3s that skip in exactly the same way as a CD I have. I've had a Stevie Ray Vaughan CD for as long as I can remember. I think it's from a remastered boxed set from the early 90's. Also, as long as I can remember it's skipped in places (you know, CD type skipping), but kept playing, so I dealt with it.

Nowadays I've got downloaded mp3s of all of this SRV material I already had on CD. Here's the weird thing: the mp3s skip in the same way as my old compilation CD. Even weirder, I don't have mp3s of that specific compilation. I believe the skipping is on an In Step reissue that's marked as being from 1999.

What's the deal? What could be the deal?

All I want for Christmas is to save a franklin on postage for a holiday CD

rileyray3000 — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 07:55:56 -0800

I used to send out a Christmas CD with holiday songs and clips from Movies and TV shows. It took a month to master and rip the CDs and 100 bucks in postage. What's a way to do this online instead? Is there somewhere I can POST a Christmas CD so people can listen online and download it if they want? This used to be my holiday project. It more or less consumed the last week of november and the first of december. So I stopped.

But I thought "If I can just take out the postage, it's not THAT awful. Ideally I'd like to have the tracks all in order and downloadable if people want. Is there a service that exists? How do I do it?

Best sounding CD of Robert Johnson recordings ?

Brandon Blatcher — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:59:08 -0800

What's the best sounding CD that contains music by the delta blues singer/guitarist Robert Johnson? Currently I have a CD of his recordings titled "King of the Delta Blues Singers". It sounds like shit. I'm not talking the fuzz and pop of an old recording, but on the some of the higher notes, say in Terraplane Blues, the sound gets distorted and it sounds like the speaker is about to blow. This has happen on different audio equipment, be it at home, work or in the car. Also the actual volume of the recording sounds quite low.

Now, I'm sure I've heard better versions of these recordings, but of course don't have anything to back that up other than "I could have sworn this sounded better on another CD!"

Is there a comprehensive list of the CDs have been put out with Johnson's music and (This the key part) is there one that sounds particularly good despite the obvious archival qualities of the recordings?

Help me be less evil

serazin — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:20:42 -0800

Is there such a thing as an independent, online music store? It seems to me that Apple and Amazon have a monopoly on online record sales now. I like to buy straight from the label if possible, but it isn't always (like right now I'm trying to buy the Micachu album but its on a British label and I'm in the US).

Is there any independent, online source for music? I'm imagining the Powell's of records.

Guilty Downloader Here.

the NATURAL — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 04:01:11 -0800

Just curious: If I buy the vinyl version of an album, will the artist be supported just as much as if I had purchased the CD instead? I listen to (mostly) rap and hip hop, and though I often don't feel compelled to buy albums, when I particularly love one, I feel like I need to support the artist (and that the artist has earned my support).

However, since I've probably already sampled the album via torrent, would it still have the same sentiment if I purchased the vinyl instead? (You know - cooler to have around, maybe I could put it on my walls, etc.)

I suppose this is mainly a question of guilt rather than numbers, because what difference does one customer really make?

Help me find a CD player

LSK — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:28:53 -0800

Help me find a portable CD player. I'm looking for a portable CD player with all these traits:

- Plays CDs with mp3 files saved on them.
- Has a LCD screen (even a small one) showing basic information.
- Can be operated blindly and without removing it from my pocket.

I used to own a nice Sony one that did all these, but lost it. Help!

Trashing Trashy Tunes

Blazecock Pileon — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 16:16:25 -0800

How can I dispose of hundreds of CDs in an environmentally sound manner? To reduce clutter, I would like to dispose of hundreds of audio and non-sensitive data CDs in an environmentally sound manner. That is, I could throw them in the trash, but this is probably a really bad idea and I'd like to hear about alternatives.

If someone wants to pay me for my music CDs, that would be awesome, definitely. However, I don't think I have the time or energy to devote a few weeks to cataloguing all these discs and their conditions. I don't have time or energy to run a stall at a flea market. If there are services that purchase music CDs (mostly electronic music, some rock and pop) outright, I'm interested.

That aside, do recycling services take CDs in bulk and is there such a facility in or reasonably near the Seattle metropolitan area?

Space-Age Bachleor Pa-aaaah Oh God No!

The Whelk — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:50:46 -0800

Music Mix Filter: Long story short, next week the model at my event is coming dressed as the Alien Queen from the ALIEN movies. I have no idea what kind of music to play for the background. The film scores seem obvious but who wants to listen to clanking and increasing strings for 3 hours? I can either go scary-horror-sci-fi or campy-alien-novelty songs. Ideally I could do both. What kind of weird space music recommendations do you have? Gotta have songs about alien invaders?

What do I absolutely have to include on a 1990s hip-hop CD?

allymusiqua — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 11:06:56 -0800

MusicFilter: Making a CD of awesomely catchy 90s-00s hip-hop/rap music. I'm driving with friends from Idaho to Wisconsin and needless to say, we're going to need hundreds of CDs to keep things interesting. I want to make a CD of ridiculous and well-known music from the late 80s to early 00s with songs that make people say "WHATTTT I HAVEN'T HEARD THIS SONG IN FOREVER! TURN IT UP!"
What do you suggest?

Why do CDs and DVDs come in different case sizes?

micahmertes — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:29:25 -0800

Why do CDs and DVDs come in different case sizes?

So you're listening to what?

heavenstobetsy — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 13:50:17 -0800

Mixtape Mission: What's your favourite song right now? I've been tasked with the job of putting together a mixtape consisting of "favourite songs". Which is to say that each song should be SOMEONE'S favourite. It does not matter whose favourite it is, so here I am. After polling my available friends, I have 10 songs. I need 10 more. Genre is unimportant and the mix will most likely be played in the background at a meet-up of 20-30 somethings. But may also end up residing in my car cd player. Help?

Thanks in advance, MeFi.

I hope wont have to invent a new program for this...

saxamo — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 23:23:50 -0800

Recommend me an ubuntu friendly program that reads idv3 tags, can create playlists & burn them to a CD. After losing yet another mp3 player, I've decided to wait it out, not purchase something else and see what sort of portable music device comes my way. Well it has in the form of a friend giving me his old mp3 cd player. It reads regular CD's and also data mp3 cd's which hold much more songs than a traditional audio disc.

What I'd like to do is have different mixes with different genres, moods, etc. I really want to pimp this thing out. My music library manager of choice (right now exaile) creates playlists and the like, but I can't burn directly from the program.

What I want is an ubuntu friendly program that will enable me to create various playlists from the music on my computer and then burn them to CD as mp3 data. I hope this makes sense to everyone.

Thanks!

An' me CD collection de Bob Marley

mippy — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 03:55:07 -0800

I have about 300 CDs, and no CD space. Given that I would like to keep the booklet and inlay cards, and would rather have my music in hard copy as well as digital, what's the best storage solution for me? I am in the UK but would be happy to buy, say, a CD wallet online if it suits my needs. Basically I'm looking for something less bulky than plastic jewel cases. I also want hard copy for sentimental value/difficulty in replacing, so while digitising them might be one solution it will not be the only one for me.

Chronological Classics

silsurf — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:15:09 -0800

Chronological Classics Jazz Series I recently became interested in finding some/any of the semi-defunct Chronological Classics Jazz series.

The Chronological Series is an amazing collection of over 1400 discs that were complied by in France. Systematically assembling every esoteric jazz classic imaginable; cleaning them up for transfer to CD; and publishing them with excellent liner notes in a series of rainbow-coloured discs. The original series was by subscription with five issues being released each month.

The French Classics label issued these discs until 2004 when it's original distributor went under. The back catalog was then acquired by Abeille Musique after Nocturne took over production and new releases resumed.

The latest batch from June of 2008:

1455 HARRY JAMES 1946 1947
1456 OSCAR PETERSON 1952 1953
1457 ELLA FITZGERALD 1954 1955
1458 BEN WEBSTER 1953 1954
1459 JOE BUSHKIN 1947 1950
1460 LUCKY MILLINDER 1951 1960
1461 STAN KENTON 1952 1953
1462 RED NICHOLS 1930 1931
1463 WARDELL GRAY 1950 1955
1464 EDDIE CONDON 1954 1955

The series is considered the greatest jazz reissue program ever undertaken.

The issues are available in places like eBay and Amazon used at a premium. The new issues are only available in French at such websites as:

jazz.abeillemusique.com The current price is 6.99 euros, but the shipping is huge and the website is in French, so I am a bit intimidated to order from them.

I am posting to the brains of Ask for any additional information on these amazing issues and where to find the current and back issues. Also, just because I know I will get some great feedback from Ya'll

Give me knowledge with a side of head nodding

reenum — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:48:06 -0800

I need intelligent hiphop/rap with good beats. Any recommendations? I was a huge hip hop head back in the day. I love a lot of '90s west coast rap with phat beats. The misogyny and gunplay is a bit much for someone my age though. Some of my favorites in terms of good beat/bad content artists are Snoop, Dre, Nelly, DJ Quik, E-40, Ice Cube, Mack 10, WC.

The problem I have with a lot of underground or intelligent hiphop is the lack of good beats. Some lyricists I love who often have horrible beats are Ras Kass, Saafir, and Aceyalone.

Yesterday, I picked up Talib Kweli's "Eardrum" and it was exactly the sort of thing I love. Intelligent lyrics with slammin' beats. I also liked Hieroglyphics back in the day. Blackalicious and the rest of Quannum are awesome too. I'm not a big Jurassic 5 fan, and I've seen them mentioned a lot in previous threads.

I've checked the other hip hop related threads and none of them seemed to directly ask this question. I'm open to all styles of hip hop as long as it meets the preceding criteria.

Thanks!

help me find a piece of classical music

Foam Pants — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 11:59:38 -0800

I am looking for a piece of classical music that was featured as a teaching tool on a computer program about 15 or 20 years ago. It was written by an Englishman, I think sometime between 1900 and 1950. It was based on an English hymn or a piece of folk music. It was intended to serve as a piece to educate kids about classical music and the components of a classical composition. I encountered it as a program that came on a CD. It played the music as it explained what was going on in the orchestra/music with a written narrative. There were other educational parts to this whole program but I remember listening to the entire piece of music the most. I know this may not be much to go on but I have been longing to hear this music again as I really liked it.

Hey, listen to this (and that's it)!

Rykey — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:18:33 -0800

Please help me turn a Windows XP machine into a public listening station to show off our library's music CD collection. Kinda long, sorry Public librarian here. I have an XP machine that will serve as a dedicated standalone station to play snippets of songs from our CD collection (the goal being to increase checkouts of our music CDs, and increase the "cool" factor of our library in general). I'll be ripping a song or two off a given CD from the collection, which will then be displayed in a playlist on a desktop audio player for patrons to listen to. The top of the listening station will only have a mouse for picking songs, headphones for listening, and a monitor to see the player (the rest of the system will live inside the stand, locked up).

For the purposes of this question, let's assume that the listening station must live on the XP desktop (we can't buy a different machine, or just have a CD player for people to pop our CDs into to listen to, for example).

Here are the main challenges:

1) Whatever audio player I use (WMP, iTunes, etc.) must be able to be very customizable. I want to be able to pare the user's options down to just playing songs from playlists, and I'd like to be able to customize the names of the columns (I know how to choose which columns I want to display, but I want to add a column for library call number, for example). If possible, I want to hide every other button or option. Setting Start/End points in songs a la iTunes is also a must.

2) I need to be able to lock the player such that no changes to playlists, settings, etc. can take place (choosing a track, play/pause, rewind/ff, and volume are the only choices). Also, the player window should not be able to be closed or resized. I can lock the rest of the desktop/menus via admin privileges, if that matters.

3) It would be cool to be able to have the player automatically fetch the album art for the currently playing track, and we can connect the machine to the internet to do this. However, this is only an added attraction, and we can forgo this step if necessary.

I'm fine with downloading players, plug-ins, hacks, etc. to allow me to do this, as long as it's legal and legit. Really I just need to make the desktop unchangeable and idiot-proof in the ways I describe above.

Which player, and how to pimp it just so?

DRM free me baby!

doorsfan — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 07:51:26 -0800

How can I be sure I buy DRM free? I'm trying to get away from buying actual CD's and there is a lot of good music coming out this month (and the rest of the summer) but how can I be sure what I am buying/downloading is DRM free? I have no preference where I buy from (historically itunes) I just want to be sure I can backup as much as I want (no software needed) or I'll have to turn to buying actual cd's.

So my question really is where can I go to be sure my legal downloads are DRM free and how can I make sure it is DRM free going fwd?

Songs about America

DoorFrame — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:08:30 -0800

I'm driving cross country and am looking to make a mix CD for the road using songs about America. Ask Metafilter has previously tackled similar questions dealing with songs about Los Angeles, California, New York, New Jersey and even Europe, but what are some of the best songs about America?

How can we get CD revenues anonymously?

stewiethegreat — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:53:38 -0800

My buddies and I just finished recording a cd that we'd like to sell on iTunes and in stores but don't want our names attached to it in any way. How can we handle getting the profits in the cheapest way possible? We recorded a cd that is not what we normally do, and don't want to have our names (group, individuals) attached to it in any way. We anticipate modest sales, if it's anything like other cd's we've done, and want to know what the best way is to get the money without there being any way for anyone to find out we did it.

We have created a name for the band, etc, which obviously is not the name of our band.

It seems like the obvious thing to do would be to create a corporation or get a lawyer to handle it, but we have no idea how to go about this, and don't want to blow our anticipated (modest) revenues on anything too expensive. All we need is a way to get the money from iTunes to our bank accounts. We'd rather not solve the problem by asking girlfriends or distant relations receive the money and forward it to us.

Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks!

How to make my own karaoke discs from scratch?

thewhynotgirl — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:09:03 -0800

How do I take a song off a regular cd, add viewable lyrics (and whatever else is necessary) and turn it into a karaoke disc that I can hand to the kj at a karaoke joint? I already have evil lyrics and some other audio software, but I can only find reference to working with songs that are already on a cdg ... no references in my audio programs to exactly how to make one myself. Further info: Evil lyrics will yield me a .kar and help me sync it to the music I'm playing ... but it doesn't explain what a .kar is or what to do with it.

And I want to make my own rather than find or purchase karaoke tracks because I tend to pick nonmainstream songs that are often not found anywhere but on the cd's I bought them on!

Thanks in advance!

How do I bridge this gap gracefully?

heavenstobetsy — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:43:21 -0800

I like indie type rock. He likes U2 and Bon Jovi. Help me make a mix cd he won't hate! I'm trying to make a mix cd composed of indie type music that isn't too...subversive? Out there? For a guy used to mainstream type rock like U2, Goo Goo Dolls, Blue Rodeo, The Fray, etc. I have made him mix cds in the past which have been mostly what I'm listening to but thought he would like. Wrong every time. Help me impress him this time. I'm looking basically for songs he's never heard of before but would be accessible to someone with his tastes. Sorry if this is vague!

For example this time I'm including:

Ryan Adams - To Be Young
Pete Yorn - Closet
Spoon - I Summon You

But also some older stuff like

Billy Joel - Vienna
Otis Redding - Try a Little Tenderness

which I know he also appreciates.

If any clarification is needed, will be watching this thread. Thanks!

music for girls who hate girls?

runincircles — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:24:54 -0800

She's so dull - come on rip her to shreds! (notterriblynicefilter) Hello.
I'm looking for songs to channel my nightmare-flatmate aggression. What is there about righteous girl-on-girl good straight-forward hatred
- about a particular woman (or non-specified person)

- BY WOMEN

- in and around the genres of punk, (old-fashioned) indie, hiphop and rock

that I can jump around to, so I don't have to jump ON anyone? Not particularly about "you stole my man" but that's good if is more aggresive than Jolene-y.
Other general "ooh I really dont like you too much" tunes, also by blokes, very welcome too!

All i have so far:
Blondie, obviously
Libel - Tilt
Solar Race - Drink my piss
and
John Cooper Clarke - Twat

Cheers!!

What makes a good classical recording?

deeper red — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 08:42:20 -0800

What makes a good classical musical recording? I know all about the importance of DDD but it seems to me that some classical recordings I buy just lack realism. If I close my eyes with some records I can believe I'm in the audience at a performance. With others, I'm clearly listening to a recording. With some recording the horn or flute sounds fresh and real, while with others it sounds like it's coming from a synthesizer.

So what makes a good classical recording? Aside from using the Penguin or Gramaphone Guide to look up what's considered good (which I don't always agree with), is there any way of telling before purchasing.

Buying classical music CDs in the UK

deeper red — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 02:09:45 -0800

Best place to buy classical music CDs online, preferably both new and second-hand titles? I'm in the UK. Amazon.co.uk are OK but not entirely comprehensive, and tend to sell at RRP, rather than discount.

I really want sleeve notes so am not keen on buying MP3s/iTunes.