Last Monday, I picked up a very used Roland D-50 keyboard at the pawn shop. Although it was manufactured in 1987, it still output audio and the MIDI still works, but the poor thing has problems (I should’ve talked them down on price, but even still I got a decent deal). All of the keys on the fingerboard worked, but a few of the keys had screwed-up velocity sensitivity. The pitch bend was busted. And some of the panel buttons either don’t work or require a heavy push to get them to work. This poor piece of gear needed some serious TLC.

Knowing what I was up against, I made the due diligence to get some required tools to do the cleanup and minor repairs. Got some paint brushes for dusting, a wire brush to scrape any rust, some 91% rubbing alcohol (because 70% has too much water), and a can of electronic contact cleaner.

Within an evening I had it taken apart. The damned thing had spiderwebs and cat hair in it. No wonder it half worked. Last owner didn’t give a shit, and it shows. I got most of the crap out of the case in short time, but it took another evening to get the fingerboard completely disassembled, and I mean completely, like down to the frame. Pulled the keys off and soaked them in soapy water; they were as nasty as the bottom of a computer mouse.

It took a few evenings, but I got both circuit boards under the keys cleaned, got the rubber contacts wiped down, all the dust and “water damage” (to doctor the truth) are cleaned up. I found proof that the keyboard has been worked on before by someone who didn’t have the smarts or the tools to do the reworks correctly, and that probably accounts for one of the keys reporting full velocity on each press. I redid the rework; hopefully that fixes that.

Yesterday, I decided that I was tired of having sub-par tools to do electronics work. After having the pleasure of working with professional soldering equipment at work, my piss-poor Radio Shack iron just won’t do anymore, so I went to the electronics store and got a good Weller soldering station, a handful of different tips, a bottle of solder flux, a dispenser, and a cheap multimeter to replace the piece-of-shit I’ve had to use for the past 25 years. Nerding hard core.

This afternoon, I pulled the entire unit apart, taking the boards and cable assemblies off of the master frame. Took them to the balcony for dusting and a heavy session with the contact cleaner. Afterwards, more of the panel buttons went non-functional, so I spent part of this evening tracking down replacement parts. I desoldered and removed one of the switches, and I’ll take it to work tomorrow to get its exact dimensions with some proper measuring tools. If it matches the replacement switches I’ve found so far, I’ll be placing an order for an entire panel’s worth of buttons.

This is all very exciting!

Hopefully by next week’s end, I’ll have a fully-functional Roland D-50, refurbished and ready to go. And then the hard part will begin: writing music. D’oh!

I use Rhythmbox for my music listening. It’s OK as a player, and it’s got some…idiosyncrasies, but it’s usable. Usually. In my early phase of ripping my collection, I examined Rhythmbox’s handling of FLAC content. It plays fine, edits tags fine. It will even transcode the FLAC if you transfer it to a portable media device. The selection of file format is automatic based on the player, but will default to MP3. In your preferences, under “Music” tab, use the dropdown to select your preferred format — this is usually for ripping CDs with Rhythmbox (ugh, use Sound Juicer instead), but also applies to transcoding for media players. I edited my MP3 profile to encode at 256KB instead of my old 192KB.

That leaves the final piece of the puzzle: sharing this collection with portable thumbdrives. According to some docs out there, you can have Rhythmbox automatically transcode when copying media to a flash thumbdrive by placing an empty file called .is_audio_player in the root folder of the device. Then, when you insert the thumbdrive, Rhythmbox will notice, check for the file, and act like it’s a portable media device if it sees the file. Then you can drag-drop the files to the drive, and everything will be automatically transcoded. It’s a cludge, but what the hell.

As an aside: I know the latest version of Ubuntu desktop ejected Rhythmbox and is now using Banshee as the default player. I assume it’s got similar functionality, but I’ve not tested it myself. I’m just not ready to jump into “Natty Narwhal” or whatever they’re calling it. Progress comes with clenched fists.

00-soundtrack — Lost Highway
00-soundtrack — Newman, David
00-soundtrack — Revell, Graeme — The Crow
00-soundtrack — Romeo + Juliet
00-soundtrack — Romeo + Juliet, Volume 2
00-soundtrack — The Crow
00-soundtrack — The Matrix
00-spoken word — All I Want Is… (U2 interview)
00-spoken word — Speaking Only… (Depeche Mode interview)
00-various artists — Box of Dub – Dubstep and Future Dub
00-various artists — Box of Dub 2 – Dubstep and Future Dub
00-various artists — Excursions in Ambience – The Second Orbit
00-various artists — Live From 6A: Great Musical Performances From Late Night With Conan O’Brien
00-various artists — Music You Wanna Have – High Volume Hits
00-various artists — Slumberland, Episode One
00-various artists — Trance Europe – A True Electronic Body Experience
10,000 Maniacs — Our Time In Eden
2nu — Ponderous
Ace of Base — The Sign
Active Radio — Active Radio (promo)
Active Radio — Frequency
Air — Moon Safari
Alice In Chains — Alice In Chains
Alice In Chains — Dirt
Alice In Chains — Jar of Flies
Allien, Ellen — Berlinette
Allien, Ellen — Dust
Allien, Ellen — SOOL
Allien, Ellen — Stadtkind
Allien, Ellen — Thrills
Ambient Temple of Imagination — Planetary House Nation
A Minor Forest — Flemish Altruism: Constituent Parts 1993-1996
Amorphous Androgynous — Tales of Ephidrina
Amos, Tori — Boys For Pele
Amos, Tori — Caught a Lite Sneeze
Amos, Tori — Crucify
Amos, Tori — From the Choirgirl Hotel
Amos, Tori — Little Earthquakes
Amos, Tori — Strange Little Girls
Amos, Tori — The Beekeeper
Amos, Tori — Under the Pink
Amos, Tori — Winter
Amos, Tori — Y Kant Tori Read
Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe — Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe
Android Lust — Stripped and Stitched
Aphex Twin — Chosen Lords
Aphex Twin — Come To Daddy
Aphex Twin — Drukqs
Aphex Twin — I Care Because You Do
Aphex Twin — Richard D. James Album
Aphex Twin — Selected Ambient Works 85-92
Aphex Twin — Selected Ambient Works, Volume II
Apoptygma Berzerk — Harmonizer
Apple, Fiona — Tidal
Apples in Stereo, The — New Magnetic Wonder
Art of Noise — The Seduction of Claude Debussy
Art of Noise –  Who’s Afraid Of? (The Art of Noise)
A-Set — The Science of Living Things
Assemblage 23 — Failure
Assemblage 23 — Meta
Audioslave — Audioslave
Autechre — Anvil Vapre
Autechre — EP7
Autechre — Garbage
Autechre — Oversteps
Autechre — Tri Repetae
Autechre — Untilted
Awolnation — Megalithic Symphony
Bad Religion — The Process of Belief
Banco de Gaia — Farewell Ferengistan
Banco de Gaia — Igizeh
Banco de Gaia — Maya
Band of Horses — Cease To Begin
Band of Horses — Everything All the Time
Band of Horses — Infinite Arms
Bassnectar — Underground Communication
Bauhaus — Crackle – Best of Bauhaus
Beastie Boys — Hello Nasty
Beastie Boys — Ill Communication
Beastie Boys — To the 5 Boroughs
Beck — Odelay
Björk — Homogenic
Björk — Medúlla
Björk — Post
Björk — Volta
Black Tape for a Blue Girl — Ashes In the Brittle Air
Black Tape for a Blue Girl — As One Aflame Laid Bare By Desire
Bluetech — Prima Materia
Bowie, David — Black Tie White Noise
Bowie, David — Earthling
Bowie, David — Heathen
Bowie, David — Hours…
Bowie, David — Let’s Dance
Bowie, David — Outside
Bowie, David — Reality
Bowie, David — The Buddha of Suburbia
Breeders, The — Last Splash
Breeders, The — Pod
Bride — Live To Die
Brooks, Meredith — Blurring the Edges
Buckley, Jeff — Grace
Burning Brides — Fall of the Plastic Empire
Burning Brides — Leave No Ashes
Cash, Johnny — American IV: The Man Comes Around
Catherine Wheel — Ferment
Chemical Brothers, The — Exit Planet Dust
Chicane — Behind the Sun
Chicane — Best of Chicane 1996-2009
Choir, The — Chase the Kangaroo
Choir, The — Circle Slide
Choir, The — Wide-Eyed Wonder
Cibo Matto — Viva! La Woman
Cinderella — Heartbreak Station
Combichrist — What the Fuck Is Wrong With You People?
Covenant — Skyshaper
Covenant — United States of Mind
Cracker — Kerosene Hat
Cracker — The Golden Age
Crystal Method, The — Divided by Night
Crystal Method, The — Drive
Cure, The — 4:13 Dream
Cure, The — Bloodflowers
Cure, The — Disintegration
Cure, The — Faith
Cure, The — Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me
Cure, The — Paris
Cure, The — Pornography
Cure, The — The 13th
Cure, The — The Cure
Cure, The — Wild Mood Swings
Cure, The — Wish
Dead Can Dance — Aion
Dead Can Dance — Toward the Within
Deadmau5 — Random Album Title
Deep Forest — Boheme
Deep Forest — Comparsa
Deep Forest — Deep Forest
Def Leppard — Hysteria
Deftones — White Pony
Delerium — Chimera
Depeche Mode — Black Celebration
Depeche Mode — Catching Up With Depeche Mode
Depeche Mode — Condemnation
Depeche Mode — Enjoy the Silence
Depeche Mode — Exciter
Depeche Mode — Music For the Masses
Depeche Mode — People Are People
Depeche Mode — Playing the Angel
Depeche Mode — Some Great Reward
Depeche Mode — Songs of Faith and Devotion
Depeche Mode — Sounds of the Universe
Depeche Mode — Ultra
Depeche Mode — Violator
Dido — No Angel
Die Form — Extremum
Dirty Wormz — The Infektion
Dream Theater — A Change of Seasons
Dream Theater — Awake
Dream Theater — Black Clouds & Silver Linings
Dream Theater — Images and Words
Dream Theater — Metropolis Pt.2: Scenes From a Memory
Dream Theater — Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence
Dream Theater — Systematic Chaos
Dream Theater — Train of Thought
Dresden Dolls, The — No, Virginia…
Dresden Dolls, The — The Dresden Dolls
Dresden Dolls, The — Yes, Virginia…
Edge of Dawn — Enjoy the Fall
Emerson, Lake & Palmer — Brain Salad Surgery
E Muzeki — Mavra Matia
Enigma — A Posteriori
Enigma — Le Roi Est Mort, Vive le Roi!
Enigma — MCMXC A.D.
Enigma — Seven Lives Many Faces
Enigma — The Cross of Changes
Enigma — The Screen Behind the Mirror
Enigma — Voyageur
Eno, Brian — Thursday Afternoon
Enya — A Day Without Rain
Enya — Shepherd Moons
Enya — The Celts
Enya — The Memory of Trees
Enya — Watermark
Erosis — Ninety Days
Evanescence — Fallen
Extreme — Extreme II: Pornograffitti
Extreme — III Sides To Every Story
Extreme — Waiting For the Punchline
Fever Ray — Fever Ray
Fever Ray — Fever Ray – Live in Luleå
Filter — Title of Record
FLIR, The — Please, Please, Please
Frantic Bleep — The Sense Apparatus
Friends of Dean Martinez — A Place In the Sun
Friends of Dean Martinez — Atardecer
Friends of Dean Martinez — Random Harvest
Front Line Assembly — Artificial Soldier
Frou Frou — Details
Fugazi — Red Medicine
Fugazi — Repeater (remastered)
Future Sound of London, The — Accelerator
Future Sound of London, The — Dead Cities
Future Sound of London, The — ISDN
Future Sound of London, The — Lifeforms
Future Sound of London, The — Lifeforms (single)
Future Sound of London, The — My Kingdom
Future Sound of London, The — Papua New Guinea
Future Sound of London, The — The Isness
Gahan, Dave — Hourglass
Gahan, Dave — Paper Monsters
Galactic Cowboys — Galactic Cowboys
Garbage — Beautiful Garbage
Garbage — Bleed Like Me
Garbage — Garbage
Garbage — Version 2.0
Genesis — Invisible Touch
Genesis — We Can’t Dance
Gerrard, Lisa & Bourke, Pieter — Duality
Gerrard, Lisa — The Mirror Pool
Gilmour, David — On an Island
Gin Blossoms — New Miserable Experience
Goldie — Saturnz Return
Goldie — Timeless
Gore, Martin L. — Counterfeit
Gore, Martin L. — Counterfeit2
Grady — Y.U. So Shady?
Grandma Dynamite — Grandma Dynamite
Grant, Amy — Heart In Motion
Gutterhaunt — Insect Machine
Harvey, P.J. — To Bring You My Love
Hatfield, Juliana — Only Everything
Haujobb — Freeze Frame Reality
Haujobb — Ninetynine
Haujobb — Solutions For a Small Planet
Heap, Imogen — I Megaphone
Heap, Imogen — Speak For Yourself
Hedges, Michael — Oracle
Hedges, Michael — The Road To Return
Hobex — Payback
Hooters, The — Nervous Night
Icon of Coil — Machines Are Us
Idol, Billy — Cyberpunk
I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness — Fear Is On Our Side
I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness — I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness
I Mother Earth — Dig
I Mother Earth — Scenery and Fish
Imperative Reaction — Minus All
Jewel — Pieces of You
Jolly Garogers, The — 33 1/3 Men On a Dead Man’s Chest
Judybats, The — Down In the Shacks Where the Satellite Dishes Grow
Judybats, The — Full-Empty
Judybats, The — Hold Your Horses
Judybats, The — Native Son
Judybats, The — Pain Makes You Beautiful
Juno Reactor — Bible of Dreams
Juno Reactor — Shango
Juno Reactor — Transmissions
Key, Cevin — The Dragon Experience
Key, Cevin — The Ghost of Each Room
King’s X — Black Like Sunday
King’s X — Dogman
King’s X — Ear Candy
King’s X — Faith Hope Love
King’s X — Gretchen Goes To Nebraska
King’s X — King’s X
King’s X — Manic Moonlight
King’s X — Ogre Tones
King’s X — Out of the Silent Planet
King’s X — Please Come Home…Mr. Bulbous
King’s X — Tape Head
King’s X — XV
KLF, The — Chill Out
KLF, The — The White Room
Knife, The — Deep Cuts
Knife, The — Silent Shout
Knife, The — Silent Shout – An Audiovisual Experience (Live)
Knife, The — The Knife
Kode9 + Space Ape, The — Memories of the Future
Kraftwerk — Autobahn
Kraftwerk — Computer World
Kraftwerk — Radio-Activity
Kraftwerk — Techno Pop
Kraftwerk — The Man-Machine
Kraftwerk — Tour de France Soundtracks
Kraftwerk — Trans-Europe Express
Krupps, Die — Odyssey of the Mind
Krupps, Die — Rings of Steel
Laibach — Anthems
Lee, Geddy — My Favorite Headache
Lemonheads, The — It’s a Shame About Ray
Liquid Zen — Liquid Zen
Lonely Boys, Los — Los Lonely Boys
Luscious Jackson — Fever In Fever Out
Lush — Gala
Lush — Split
Lush — Spooky
Lust Murder Box — Lust Murder Box
Mann, Aimee — I’m With Stupid
Mann, Aimee — Lost in Space
Mann, Aimee — Whatever
Manson, Marilyn — Antichrist Superstar
Manson, Marilyn — Holy Wood
Manson, Marilyn — Mechanical Animals
Manson, Marilyn — Smells Like Children
Mazzy Star — She Hangs Brightly
Mazzy Star — So Tonight That I Might See
McLachlan, Sarah — Afterglow
McLachlan, Sarah — Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
McLachlan, Sarah — Rarities, B-Sides, & Other Stuff
McLachlan, Sarah — Solace
McLachlan, Sarah — Surfacing
McLachlan, Sarah — The Freedom Sessions
McLachlan, Sarah — Touch
Megadeth — Countdown To Extinction
Megadeth — Risk
Megadeth — Youthanasia
Merchant, Natalie — Tigerlily
Metallica — Load
Metallica — Metallica
Mind.In.A.Box — Crossroads
Ministry — Animositisomina
Ministry — ΚΕΦΑΛΗΞΘ (Psalm 69)
Moby — Play
Modest Mouse — Good News for People Who Love Bad News
Mogwai — Come On Die Young
Mojave 3 — Spoon and Rafter
Moody Blues, The — Story of…Legend of a Band
Morissette, Alanis — Jagged Little Pill
My Bloody Valentine — Isn’t Anything
My Bloody Valentine — Loveless
Nine Inch Nails — Broken
Nine Inch Nails — Pretty Hate Machine
Nine Inch Nails — The Downward Spiral
Nine Inch Nails — The Fragile
Nine Inch Nails — The Perfect Drug (Versions)
Nine Inch Nails — With Teeth
Nine Inch Nails — Year Zero
Numan, Gary — Jagged
Numan, Gary — The Pleasure Principle
Numan, Gary — The Pleasure Principle (30th Anniversary Edition)
Ohgr — SunnyPsyOp
Ohgr — Welt
Oingo Boingo — Skeletons In the Closet: The Best of Oingo Boingo
Oktober People, The — The Oktober People
Orbital — In Sides
Orbital — Orbital
Orb, The — Baghdad Batteries (Orbsessions Volume III)
Orb, The — Bicycles & Tricycles
Orb, The — Cydonia
Orb, The — Orblivion
Orb, The — Orbus Terrarum
Orb, The — Pomme Fritz
Orb, The — The Dream
Orb, The — The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld
Orgy — Candyass
Osborne, Joan — Relish
Osbourne, Ozzy — Ozzmosis
Ours — Precious (single)
Outfield, The — Playing the Field
Pandit Pran Nath — Raga Cycle
Passengers — Original Soundtracks 1
Pearl Jam — Ten
Perfect Circle, A — Emotive
Perfect Circle, A — Mer de Noms
Perfect Circle, A — Thirteenth Step
Perry, Steve — For the Love of Strange Medicine
Pigface — Fook
Pigface — Gub / Spoon Breakfast Reissue
Pigface — Truth Will Out
Pigface — Washingmachine Mouth
Pigface — Welcome to Mexico…Asshole
Pilotdrift — Iter Facere
Pilotdrift — Water Sphere
Pink Floyd — A Momentary Lapse of Reason
Pink Floyd — Animals
Pink Floyd — Meddle
Pink Floyd — Pulse
Pink Floyd — The Dark Side of the Moon
Pink Floyd — The Division Bell
Pink Floyd — The Final Cut
Pink Floyd — The Wall
Pink Floyd — Wish You Were Here
Pinnick, Dug — Strum Sum Up
Pixies — Bossanova
Pixies — Doolittle
Pixies — Pixies at the BBC
Pixies — Surfer Rosa
Pixies — Trompe le Monde
Plant, Robert — Fate of Nations
Plant, Robert — The Principle of Moments
Portishead — Third
Primus — Sailing the Seas of Cheese
Prince — 1999
Probot — Probot
Project Pitchfork — Daimonion
Project Pitchfork — Dream, Tiresias!
Queensrÿche — Empire
Queensrÿche — Operation: Mindcrime
Radiohead — OK Computer
Red Hot Chili Peppers — Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Richards, Miranda Lee — The Herethereafter Sampler
Robots — Robots
Rollins Band — Weight
Röyksopp — Junior
Röyksopp — The Understanding
Rush — 2112
Rush — A Farewell To Kings
Rush — Caress of Steel
Rush — Counterparts
Rush — Fly by Night
Rush — Grace Under Pressure
Rush — Hemispheres
Rush — Hold Your Fire
Rush — Moving Pictures
Rush — Permanent Waves
Rush — Power Windows
Rush — Presto
Rush — Roll the Bones
Rush — Rush
Rush — Signals
Rush — Snakes & Arrows
Rush — Test For Echo
Rush — Vapor Trails
Saint — Too Late For Living
Schnauss, Ulrich — Far Away Trains Passing By
Schnauss, Ulrich — Goodbye
Seabound — Beyond Flatline
Seabound — Double-Crosser
Seal — Seal
Seal — Seal (1994)
Sepultura — Roots
Sevendust — Sevendust
Shadow, D.J. — Endtroducing…..
Shadow, D.J. — The Private Press
She Wants Revenge — She Wants Revenge
She Wants Revenge — This Is Forever
Shpongle — Are You Shpongled?
Shpongle — Ineffable Mysteries From Shpongleland
Shpongle — Nothing Lasts…But Nothing Is Lost
Sigur Rós — ( )
Sigur Rós — Ágætis Byrjun
Skinny Puppy — Bites
Skinny Puppy — Cleanse Fold and Manipulate
Skinny Puppy — Last Rights
Skinny Puppy — Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse
Skinny Puppy — Mythmaker
Skinny Puppy — Rabies
Skinny Puppy — Remission
Skinny Puppy — The Greater Wrong of the Right
Skinny Puppy — The Process
Skinny Puppy — Too Dark Park
Skinny Puppy — VivisectVI
Skream — Outside the Box
Slowdive — Just For a Day
Slowdive — Pygmalion
Slowdive — Souvlaki
Slowrider — Mas Alla
Smashing Pumpkins, The — Adore
Smashing Pumpkins, The — Gish
Smashing Pumpkins, The — Lull
Smashing Pumpkins, The — Machina – The Machines of God
Smashing Pumpkins, The — Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness: Dawn to Dusk
Smashing Pumpkins, The — Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness: Twilight to Starlight
Smashing Pumpkins, The — Pisces Iscariot
Smashing Pumpkins, The — Siamese Dream
Smashing Pumpkins, The — Zeitgeist
Smiths, The — Best…I
Sobule, Jill — Happy Town
Sobule, Jill — Jill Sobule
Solar Twins — Solar Twins
Sophie & Ives — Untie Me
Soundgarden — Badmotorfinger
Soundgarden — Down On the Upside
Soundgarden — Superunknown
Spin Doctors — Pocket Full of Kryptonite
Spin Doctors — Turn It Upside Down
Squirrel Nut Zippers — Hot
Stabbing Westward — Darkest Days
Stabbing Westward — Ungod
Stabbing Westward — Wither Blister Burn and Peel
Stone Temple Pilots — Core
Stone Temple Pilots — No. 4
Sugarcubes, The — Stick Around For Joy
System of a Down — Mezmerize
System of a Down — System of a Down
Tea Party, The — Transmission
Temple of the Dog — Temple of the Dog
The Charlatans UK — Between 10th and 11th
They Might Be Giants — Apollo 18
They Might Be Giants — Flood
‘Til Tuesday — Coming Up Close: a Retrospective
Toadies — No Deliverance
Tool — 10,000 Days
Tool — Ænima
Tool — Lateralus
Tool — Undertow
Tricky — Angels With Dirty Faces
Tricky — Knowle West Boy
Tricky — Maxinquaye
Trout Fishing In America — Who Are These People?
Tubeway Army — Replicas
Tweaker — 2 A.M. Wakeup Call
Tweaker — The Attraction To All Things Uncertain
Two — Voyeurs
Type O Negative — Bloody Kisses
Type O Negative — Dead Again
Type O Negative — Life Is Killing Me
Type O Negative — October Rust
Type O Negative — Slow, Deep and Hard
Type O Negative — The Origin of the Feces
Type O Negative — World Coming Down
U2 — Achtung Baby
U2 — All That You Can’t Leave Behind (partial)
U2 — Boy
U2 — How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
U2 — No Line On the Horizon
U2 — October
U2 — Pop
U2 — Rattle and Hum
U2 — Summer Rain (single)
U2 — The Joshua Tree
U2 — The Unforgettable Fire
U2 — War
U2 — Zooropa
Undercover — Balance of Power
Urge Overkill — Saturation
Van Halen — 5150
Van Halen — For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge
VAST — Music For People
VAST — Nude
VAST — Visual Audio Sensory Theater
Velocity Girl — ¡Simpatico!
Victor — Victor
VNV Nation — Empires
VNV Nation — Futureperfect
VNV Nation — Judgement
VNV Nation — Matter+Form
VNV Nation — Of Faith, Power and Glory
Waters, Roger — Amused To Death
Weezer — Make Believe
Weezer — Weezer
White Zombie — Astro-Creep: 2000
White Zombie — La Sexorcisto: Devil Music, Volume 1
White Zombie — Supersexy Swingin’ Sounds
XTC — Skylarking
Yes — 90125
Yes — Big Generator
Yes — Keys To Ascension
Yes — Talk
Yes — The Ladder
Yes — Union
Zombie, Rob — American Made Music to Strip By
Zombie, Rob — Hellbilly Deluxe
Zombie, Rob — The Sinister Urge
Zwan — Mary Star of the Sea
Zykos — Comedy Horn
Zykos — Zykos
ZZ Top — Afterburner
ZZ Top — Antenna
ZZ Top — Rhythmeen

Remember: these are only the albums I have on physical media. I have plenty more in my digital-only collection. Time to get more music!

Also, don’t judge me. You know you listened to bad music during your not-so-hip past. My only crime is owning up to it.

I have a large music collection, and I make every effort to keep all of my file tags as clean, correct and complete as possible. This allows me to easily search my collection and drill down to the artist, album, and song I demand to hear at that moment. If you’ve ever seen my CD collection, you’re aware of my meticulous arranging and sorting by certain criteria. The same is with my electronic collection. Physically, I prefer to sort by artist, then by album release date. Electronically, I can sort by any taxonomy I so choose. Easy enough.

So, going back to my library research orientation in my first year in college, I learned that books are sorted by subject, then by the author’s name, last name first, and then by book title. If the first word of the title is an article like “a”, “an” or “the”, it is moved to the end of the title after a comma and the book is sorted appropriately. So if I were to search for H.G. Well’s “The Time Machine”, I would search in the fiction section under the author “Wells, H.G.”, then for “Time Machine, The” somewhere after “Ten Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”. This makes sense. If the author was a publishing group or authorship can’t be pinned to one author, then it would be sorted under the group name.

I do the same with my music collection. If the album is published under a band name, then it’s sorted alphabetically under the band name. Aerosmith would be sorted before Aphex Twin. But if the album is published under the artist’s name, then it’s sorted by the artist’s name, last name first. So Fiona Apple would be sorted between Aphex Twin and Apples In Stereo under Apple, Fiona. This makes sense.

When I first built my music collection, back when music software wasn’t so smart, I would manually put articles at the end of the album and song titles because the software could clump all of the “The”s together, etcetera. It’s a pain and a hassle to do it manually, and sometimes the “extra album info” features of the software would break because it didn’t recognize the album title, but I lived with it. Luckily, modern music software has gotten smart about the use of articles in the song and album titles and sorts appropriately in the music browser interface.

But the problem comes with the artist names, which I store in my particular, perfectly reasonable way according to my training and my experience with sorting physical media: last name, then first. However, the software doesn’t know that I’m listening to Fiona Apple; it searches the web for Apple, Fiona and finds no data to show. Just like the old days with the title articles, so it is with artist names.

So what do you guys do about this? Is saving the artist name as “Last, First” still viable, or is it a vestigial relic of an older technology? I like to sort by this method because it makes sense to me; I shudder to think about trying to scroll through a page of Michaels just to get to Michael Hedges. I don’t know, maybe doing the “Last, First” method is as obsolete in the electronic realm as typing double spaces after sentences; a complete necessity on technologies now rendered obsolete. Should I get modern and save artist names in the natural format? Most player software has a search box to allow me to jump straight to my desired songs, but I’d have to change my habits.

What’s your thought?

First and foremost is that FLAC is lossless, meaning no data is thrown away between the transition from CD to the final sound file. MP3 is a lossy codec, and uses tons of statistical mojo to analyze the sound data of the CD and throw away the bits that your ears can’t hear, crunching the file size tremendously. The problem with this method is that you’re losing the quieter nuances of your music. FLAC’s strength is that it’s able to take the input waveforms and chop them up into similar, easy-to-compress chunks, making the file smaller than the original uncompressed form but on playback the audio is a perfect, exact copy of its original form.

Secondly, since FLAC doesn’t compress the file sizes as well as MP3 (with the obvious quality tradeoffs), the overall space needed to store my music collection has grown tremendously. Instead of storing an entire album in roughly 80 megabytes of space, it now takes an average of 350 megabytes. That’s a large bite to swallow, but with the falling prices of high-capacity hard drives, it’s nothing nowadays. Considering the audio CD format stores around 700 megabytes, that’s not so bad.

I’ve been meaning to do this, because even with my bad ears I can still sometimes hear the strange audio artifacts of the MP3 compression — called “sizzle” in the industry — when I’m listening to my stuff. After I ripped my first disc and gave a listen, I was shocked at the quality difference. There were little pieces of the sound, stuff from the studio, or the audience, or quiet stuff put into the mix, that I never knew was there after listening to the MP3-encoded form for years. The sound came out of my speakers; FLAC saves the exact same stereo phasing that’s mixed into the CD in the final file, and no amount of MP3 bitrate is going to capture that level of nuance. I’m shocked.

So last weekend, I bought a 1 Terabyte hard disk (that’s roughly 1,000,000 Megabytes), installed it, and started ripping the CDs on my shelf. Within two days, I had the shelf of CDs I’ve acquired since 2007; about 60 discs total. And then I cracked open the 120-pound crate of CDs that I’ve collected since my first disc in 1991. These were packed up at my last place, and I’ve just now gotten around to digging them out. I’m about 1/8th of the way through my entire collection, so I expect this to take a while.

When it’s all said and done, my hope is that I will never have to break out a CD again to get quality audio. The end FLAC files can be used as perfect copies to produce any sort of MP3, OGG, or next-generation compressed audio file for ease of portability. Any other use (like for listening at home), I can rely on the FLAC.