Cheap Bluetooth adaptor for headphones

[GdS]

I have a standard cd /amp old skool so no Bluetooth output. I've tried a couple of cheap crap ebay adaptors but they only transmit in mono. I'm looking for a mains / USB powered little gizmo that goes in the cupboard with the HiFi and transmits upstairs, can be either 3.5mm jack or RCA inputs via the tape out on the amp.

Any recommendations? if too expensive will just use the CD player on the PC and a portable MiniDisc player

[Polar Bear]

My FiCL bought one of those and is less than impressed with it.  He too lives in a flat, a small flat in a retirement complex.

Perhaps quality is a bit variable?

[GdS]

Thanks for the replies 

The old skool hifi has been successfully repurposed into cinema sound for the TV so anything else is a bonus. Just listening to the Dunkirk soundtrack obtained off youtube onto MD and played via a MD Walkman and old skool wire into said headphones think I'll stick with that it sounds every bit as good

on a tangent am I in a minority in still liking to have music on a hard format ie CD/MD rather than rely on MP3 / Spotify etc? judging by the low prices you can buy s/h CDs on eBay I suspect maybe?

[rafletcher]

If I were single, all my music would likely be in hard formats. Being married to someone who prefers speech radio and hates pop/rock means I rarely get the chance to listen to any, so streaming whilst in the shed is one way I manage to listen. Similarly I use CarPlay on the move to stream from Spotify.

[Kim]

on a tangent am I in a minority in still liking to have music on a hard format ie CD/MD rather than rely on MP3 / Spotify etc? judging by the low prices you can buy s/h CDs on eBay I suspect maybe?

I like to have music on CD.  It immediately gets ripped to FLAC and put on the file server for the convenience of not having to muck about with optical drives, and can be transcoded to a lossy format if needed for compatibility, but I keep all the CDs as a convenient backup.

Never got into streaming, but I haven't really listened to the radio since 1998.  Nearly all my music listening happens when I'm travelling, so files on an SD card are the order of the day.

[ian]

I stream, it's quite liberating and I discover lots of new music. I do have a bazillion CDs in the garage and fond reminiscences of flicking through alphabetized vinyl in the record shops on spare afternoons and buying cassette bootlegs down the market, so it took me a while to admit the world had left me behind and ripping CDs was an old man's habit like growing ear hairs and voting Conservative. It sort of amazes that my life in music now sits on a modest-sized phone. Occasionally, I gather small children around and tell them the tale of the compact cassette.

[citoyen]

During the day, while I'm at work, I mostly listen to 6music or tunes from my Apple Music library (a mix of downloads and ripped stuff), streamed to my Bluetooth headphones from my desktop computer. If I leave my desk, the signal just about stretches as far as the kitchen but tends to break up a bit. The bathroom is a bit closer. If I'm pottering about away from my desk for an extended period, I'll switch to streaming from my phone. We have a standalone DAB radio in the kitchen that I use eg while making dinner - and that also has Bluetooth so I can stream music to it from my phone.

My ears aren't sensitive enough to discern the supposedly superior quality of lossless formats so expensive hi-fi kit would be wasted on me. The convenience of portable listening outweighs quality considerations.

We still have several shelves full of CDs but I don't think I've bought a new CD for years. I don't buy "vinyls" either.

[citoyen]

on a tangent am I in a minority in still liking to have music on a hard format ie CD/MD rather than rely on MP3 / Spotify etc?

Don't know about hard formats generally but you're certainly in a minority if you're still using MD!

I'm sure we still have my wife's old MD player knocking about somewhere but I've not seen it for years.

[Lightning Phil]

My LPs were recorded onto my PC as WAV files in 1995.  Plugged the line out from amp into the sound blaster card and used the basic windows sound app.  Of course there were no shortcuts to recording an LP. It had to be played and then flip sides after 20-22 mins or so.  Some years later I imported the WAV files into iTunes for my iPod. I still have the LPs and CDs in the loft.  Don’t think I have cassettes in the loft. But as my wife pointed out, I do still have my 1980s Phoenix Phreeranger tent and 1970s karrimor rucksacks in the loft, so who knows?

Downstairs the music plays through a sound bar with an iPod dock.  The sound bar also has a dab radio. Upstairs it’s a small dab radio with iPod dock or the PC. In the car I have the radio, music over Bluetooth or wired, plus it can play mp3 on DVDs. I don’t drive the car much though, even outside a pandemic.

[citoyen]

Don’t think I have cassettes in the loft.

I made a conscious decision to dispose of my cassettes some years ago. I filled several large black bin bags with them. It was a painful experience, but they weren't earning their keep so they had to go. I had quite a large number of bootleg cassettes that are obviously irreplaceable... except that it turns out that several of my favourite ones have been ripped to Youtube by others, so I can still listen to them if I ever feel like it. 

[ian]

I have a big duffel bag full of cassettes in the loft. Weirdly, the only cassette player we have is in the car, but I've never actually listened to them in years. I'm too sentimental to get rid of them, I'm sure there's awful stuff, but there are all those mixtapes that catalogue my lovelorn youth. I have fond memories of the gradual shrinkage of Walkmen from something the size of a suitcase to a device that was so small the naked butt of the cassette dangled out of the end like a rap video booty call. Cassettes were the business, everyone had a dual deck machine to copy from friends and create mixtapes.

I have a pile of vinyl somewhere (boy, that stuff is heavier than a chunky brother) from the era when that was the way to demonstrate you were serious about your music. That and an epic Robert Smith hairdo. I moved over to CDs at university, I remember carrying them around in a big wallet so I could sit around and be indecisive about which disc to play next. I was wired for sound.

When I got my first iPod (I think it was a second-gen), I sat down and spent weeks ripping all those CDs to mp3. That was grade 4 suboptimal fun. I keep meaning to get rid of the CDs, the only devices I have to play them are the DVD player and temperamental optical drive in the old Mac Mini that powers my printer and I have everything on my phone either in my library or streamed.

[Mr Larrington]

I have actually bought a couple of vinyls in my personal digital era but they were limited edition releases by the mighty Amplifier and things of beauty in their own right.  I haven’t actually played them or anything.  Research conducted a couple of years ago suggests that the last one before that was in 2002 – “Nextdoorland” by the briefly reconstituted Soft Boys – and I don’t think that one got played either as in the course of said research I discovered it had a 7” single tucked inside the sleeve.  Oh, and Nik Turner’s book wot I got for Christmas in 2019 had a 7” included too.  Which I really ought to rip for completeness' sake although I don’t have a pressing need for yet another version of “Sonic Attack”.

DigiTunes live on a NAS and are generally accessed with iTunes.  And can be piped via a wired Airport Express to an amp and squeakers in the kitchen should I so desire.  None of this new-fangled Bluetooth wireless streamicasting nonse over radiophonic neshes or speakers you can order about.  It's unnatural and upsets the horses.

[frankly frankie]

on a tangent am I in a minority in still liking to have music on a hard format ie CD/MD rather than rely on MP3 / Spotify etc? judging by the low prices you can buy s/h CDs on eBay I suspect maybe?

The low s/h prices are a result of the grey market created by those who rip their CDs then unethically sell them on or even give them away (eg to charity shops).

[GdS]

on a tangent am I in a minority in still liking to have music on a hard format ie CD/MD rather than rely on MP3 / Spotify etc? judging by the low prices you can buy s/h CDs on eBay I suspect maybe?

The low s/h prices are a result of the grey market created by those who rip their CDs then unethically sell them on or even give them away (eg to charity shops).

dunno about that would anyone really buy a CD at retail price rip it to an inferior sound quality format then sell it on and risk losing the ripped copy on a fried hard disk?

Found out that the MD Minidisc mains adaptor also fits a CD Walkman I sort of acquired so just listening to a 20p (on ebid) free Daily Mail Oxygene CD

[Kim]

on a tangent am I in a minority in still liking to have music on a hard format ie CD/MD rather than rely on MP3 / Spotify etc? judging by the low prices you can buy s/h CDs on eBay I suspect maybe?

The low s/h prices are a result of the grey market created by those who rip their CDs then unethically sell them on or even give them away (eg to charity shops).

dunno about that would anyone really buy a CD at retail price rip it to an inferior sound quality format then sell it on and risk losing the ripped copy on a fried hard disk?

You don't have to rip to an inferior format.  FLAC (the clue's in the name) is bit-for-bit accurate, and achieves a modest but useful ~50% compression ratio.

As for backups, sure, if you're an old curmudgeon like me who's appropriately cynical about data.  But if you're signed up for all-you-can-eat Spotify and your only optical drive is in your old laptop, perhaps having that CD collection kicking around seems a bit redundant?

[ian]

You can have mine, it's in the never-got-around-to-selling Ikea cabinet in the garage.

I think approximately zero people can tell the difference between high bitrate mp3 and AAC and CD and they're probably lying.

[Kim]

I think approximately zero people can tell the difference between high bitrate mp3 and AAC and CD and they're probably lying.

I certainly can't.  But if I'm going to go around transcoding or editing things, I'd like to start with the lossless format.

I can barely make out artefacts in ATRAC2, and I consider 128kbit MP3 "okay for the car".  But there's no need to go that low in this day and age.


TBH, if we're going to get angsty about lossy acousic coding, can we direct our scorn where it's warranted:  Internet video and telephony.  If it's HD video, what's the point in being stingy with the audio bitrate?  Meanwhile, telephones are a pile of shit.  G711?  Seriously, it's not 1987 any more.  The GSM codec should have died a death with 3G.  Why can't we have phones that we can actually hear people on?  (Video conferencing, being the unholy alliance of streaming video and telephony seems to survive entirely on people's extremely low expectations.)