cirdanlunae
Concerning the long track duration, are you playing a single FLAC plus a Cuesheet? That would be my guess for why the duration is freaking out.
DID I HEAR A RULE AND STONE!?
150,000 track collection owner here.
CDs are king, but the cost adds up. A lot of artists I follow are on Bandcamp, which I use to purchase my music. I assume everything I buy there will eventually be removed, so I don’t rely on them for archiving it.
But then, there’s the piracy route, which I do for a good portion of my library. Rutracker is absolutely fantastic for lossless. Soulseek is solid, but you gotta use it in a smart way for some releases. Some keywords don’t turn up any results for some reason. So, to find certain albums/artists, try searching for a particular song, then browse by folder on those results to find full albums, if that makes sense.
Why not use Qobuz or Deezer to rip music? Qobuz-dl and Deemix let you rip FLAC from those services if you have a streaming acct. I use Deemix with my Deezer acct to download a TON of music I cant find anywhere else.
Its a lot of work, I agree. But it’s doable. At this point, as services get shittier, pirate. They need to learn that as their services get shittier, people will leave. Give them a financial reason to get better ;)
I honestly just pay for deezer. Any song I want to DL with Deemix for 12$ a month? Absolutely yes. Plus, my wife uses that account to stream on her phone, so it’s a win win
Deezer can have better quality than Soulseek, but I’ve had a lot of success on Soulseek though. If you doubt a DL, you can always spectrum analyze it to check for obvious fake files
These rips, even in FLAC, never contain logs or cues. If you’re downloading FLAC for archival purposes, these files are essential. Private trackers and SS are the only way I download music. Scene rips are a waste of my time
Sonos users, come on over to Lyrion. The water’s open source, self hosted, and fine 😎