> Like yourself, I do also listen to full albums. You can do that on Spotify very easily
Can you load into Spotify a very specific recoding that's rarely available? I have a few CDs hard to source from rare live recordings.
If you just want to listen to background music, or a given song from a given bad, sure. If you want to listen to a specific recording that happened at a given date for which you have the CD, I don't think Spotify can do that.
> I think smart phones are the best thing to happen to portable music.
If they had hardware buttons, yes, but that's rarely found. Also, the DAC is rarely any good (less of a problem now that LDAC and AptXhd are becoming popular).
Are these hardware buttons and a good DAC worth $400 to $4000? Maybe not to you, but they are worth that for me.
> Can you load into Spotify a very specific recoding that's rarely available? I have a few CDs hard to source from rare live recordings.
Weirdly, yes you can. I stumbled across that option myself on the desktop client when search for a song that wasn’t in Spotify’s catalogue.
> If you just want to listen to background music, or a given song from a given bad, sure. If you want to listen to a specific recording that happened at a given date for which you have the CD, I don't think Spotify can do that.
It can, but you really don’t need to use Spotify if you don’t want to. I still keep Subsonic around for exactly this kind of scenario (and podcasts too). So I use Spotify for 90% of my listening but Subsonic for anything I’ve curated myself from physical media.
> If they had hardware buttons, yes, but that's rarely found.
All smart phone has hardware volume buttons. My Bluetooth earphones have hardware play and pause buttons. And the device we are comparing it against (the new Sony Walkman) is also touchscreen based like smart phones. So there isn’t really anything between modern Walkmans and smart phones these days.
> Are these hardware buttons and a good DAC worth $400 to $4000? Maybe not to you, but they are worth that for me.
You have no idea how much I’ve spent on audio hardware so please don’t assume I cheap out and don’t care about audio quality. In my home office alone I have an entire rack full of professional grade hardware. But I’m also pragmatic about what I buy. A £400 MP3 player isn’t going to sound any better than an iPhone when I’m listening to lossy music. The real differentiator there is what (ear|head)phones I use. However when I am sat at home my vinyl collection, I notice all the nuances of cheaper hardware much more.
> All smart phone has hardware volume buttons. My Bluetooth earphones have hardware play and pause buttons.
I don't care much about volume buttons - it's usually adjusted to what I think is right and rarely tweaked.
What I care about is buttons to control the tracks: there are no next/previous track and play button on the smartphones I tried.
> And the device we are comparing it against (the new Sony Walkman) is also touchscreen based like smart phones.
It also has actual hardware buttons.
> So there isn’t really anything between modern Walkmans and smart phones these days
Well, if you exclude the buttons I care about, yes.
> when I’m listening to lossy music
You do, but I don't!
> The real differentiator there is what (ear|head)phones
Agreed, it's often the limiting factors. I had played with FLAC files before but couldn't find much of a difference.
Now that I have proper headphones and earbuds, I do!! And it's actually why I'm waiting for proper neckbad earbuds to consider exercicing with music: just like I don't want to listen to lossy music, I don't want to be exposed to bad earbuds.
Can you load into Spotify a very specific recoding that's rarely available? I have a few CDs hard to source from rare live recordings.
If you just want to listen to background music, or a given song from a given bad, sure. If you want to listen to a specific recording that happened at a given date for which you have the CD, I don't think Spotify can do that.
> I think smart phones are the best thing to happen to portable music.
If they had hardware buttons, yes, but that's rarely found. Also, the DAC is rarely any good (less of a problem now that LDAC and AptXhd are becoming popular).
Are these hardware buttons and a good DAC worth $400 to $4000? Maybe not to you, but they are worth that for me.