Do you often return to the same tracks?

I thought it was just me! I similarly have ~2TB but probably listen often to the same bunch of tracks mostly made up of Pink Floyd, Rumer, Anita Baker to name but a few

As a result of getting to know these tracks rather intimately I tend use them for auditioning purposes!

We have nearly 3,000 albums and they are very diverse. I always play whole albums and like to search through the Naim app for stuff I've not played for a while. It's usually chamber music in the morning, and other stuff later. So no, I don't keep returning to the same albums. What's the point of owning 3,000 albums and only listening to a few? 

Incidentally, what do you do? You ask these questions but contribute very little yourself. 

Guilty as charged.  Yes I do return to favourite albums, but my list of albums is around 100 rather than a smaller list as is the case with Mrs Mike's favourites.   I browse album art covers from time to time to help jog memories of not payed recently as I find the picture prompts my memory cells better than a list of titles.

A supplementary related question;  how many albums do you typically play in one "session" 

Albums yes. Very rarely tracks because I mostly play albums in their entirety. See recent thread  https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...ularly-played-pieces

answer to Mike B's supplementary question: no such thing as a typical session. Varies from just one or two albums to maybe 10 or more if having a day of it at the weekend. (Of course it depends on the album as well, varying from about 1/2 to 2 hours!)

Innocent Bystander posted:

answer to Mike B's supplementary question: no such thing as a typical session. Varies from just one or two albums to maybe 10 or more if having a day of it at the weekend

OK much the same as me.  

At any point in time, I tend to listen to a relatively small number of albums (rather than tracks) regularly. I would guess it's maybe 30 or 40 albums, and than I dip into the rest of my collection as well. This content of this core of 30 - 40 albums is not fixed though, it evolves gradually as I find new albums that I like. 4 or 5 years ago, it would have been completely different to the current list.  

As HH, I'm also an albums listener. I only play tracks when I'm listening to "new" music with my oldest son to share "discoveries".

During working days I ussualy listen to 3-4 albums. Stream from Tidal or Qobuz 1 or 2 albums, I haven't listened before, posted by forumites in the music room and stream or spin (cds or lps)  1 or 2 albums from my collection. 

During weekends sometimes I listen to 10 or more albums per day, giving priority to new acquisitions.

There is of course a core set of things I hear more often. But I am not track oriented and tend to listen to albums in whole. Out of my 11.000 albums I would say around 200 I hear quite regularly.

Yes I often return to the same tracks and albums... occasionally adding to the regular play repertoire. I find some music puts me in a certain frame of mind so I play it to order as it were...

Apparently a young Adolf Hitler did the same with his close friend August Kubizek when  they regularly went to see and hear Wagner opera in Vienna together... I hope that says nothing about me.....

same for me, listen to a lot of new music,  but do return to some Fav's - in particular Floyd, Genesis, London Grammar Mike Oldfield, The XX, old music from Elton John

seems we can always find something new on our systems

Bert Schurink posted:

There is of course a core set of things I hear more often. But I am not track oriented and tend to listen to albums in whole. Out of my 11.000 albums I would say around 200 I hear quite regularly.

Wow, there must be loads that you have never played more than the original once or twice!

To have found an average of more than 4 new albums that I liked enough to buy every week over the 48 years that I have been buying records would have been a full time job listening to potential new things - but perhaps that's because I have restricted musical tastes.

My input varies a little.

yes I have certain favourites that I would go to from time to time ( a bit like comfort food), but would usually be track specific.

i also like to use the system a bit like a joke box, and use random play yo throw out all sorts, and often gives me music not heard for a long time, as I have a large catalogue.

other point, which people might not agree with, is that I tend to but a lot of music on a weekly basis, often from reviews in Sunday papers, etc, much of which would be new to me, and often when bought, I actually do not like some of the stuff. You might think this a waste, but I find it a good way to be nitro diced to new artists and music. Hence the large catalogue.

Sorry, reviewing that last post of mine it sounds more like a criticism than the wonderment I was feeling.

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Apparently a young Adolf Hitler did the same with his close friend August Kubizek when  they regularly went to see and hear Wagner opera in Vienna together... I hope that says nothing about me..... 

You need to remember that young Adolph was able to keep himself fit by cranking the record player handle. Streaming however has no such fitness side benefits,  what does that say about your ..........  

Like several of the other posters, I rarely listen to single tracks, I'm an album listener. Since getting into streamed music last year I'm back on a music buying roll in a way I haven't been for at least 10 years, so I do listen to a lot of new (to me) albums and (ripped) CDs. But there are also pieces of music which regularly get played, Bach, Beethoven, Schubert favourite pereformances go on a lot, Joni's Hejira and others, Floyd's DSOTM and WYWH as well as the others, Richard Thompson's work gets regular runouts, Beautiful South a lot, I'd estimate it's a bit over 50% regular favourites with the rest being split between new buys getting learnt and "Oh I haven't listened to that for far too long".

Cbr600 posted:

My input varies a little.

yes I have certain favourites that I would go to from time to time ( a bit like comfort food), but would usually be track specific.

i also like to use the system a bit like a joke box, and use random play yo throw out all sorts, and often gives me music not heard for a long time, as I have a large catalogue.

other point, which people might not agree with, is that I tend to but a lot of music on a weekly basis, often from reviews in Sunday papers, etc, much of which would be new to me, and often when bought, I actually do not like some of the stuff. You might think this a waste, but I find it a good way to be nitro diced to new artists and music. Hence the large catalogue.

Record buying patterns are interesting, and inevitably different, as indeed are people's view of their collections: for me, I buy for longevity, so only buy a recording if I believe I will want to come back to it (I have made the occasional mistake, liking something enough to buy but finding that instead of growing on me over the first few plays I increasingly wondered what motivated me to buy it (Faust's first, self-titled album sticks in my mind) but only a handfull or two in best part of 50 years. 

In the early 70s when I was first working and still living at home with no commitments like mortgage, car, kids etc, I used to spend maybe about a third of my income on LPs, typically buying 2-3 a week: I would go to the record shops in my town on a Saturday and spend at least a couple of hours listening to a selection before choosing. Mostly not classical because the local library was excellent for that at  a very token cost, so typically I would just borrow several albums at a time.

Then a combination of things caused a reduction in my buying, partly I had listened to everything I thought might be of interest in the local stores so largely it was only new releases that tended to be of potential interest, meanwhile the style of music I particularly liked started to give way to more things I didn't, and leaving home brought financial commitments that precluded so much going on records. My buying then became very sporadic, from time to time discovering some new artist I liked, otherwise new releases from bands that I liked. Then came filling in my classical collection, no longer having a nearby library.

So I have ended up with around 1200 albums, though even with that a significant proportion can go for years between playings. I am aware that there will be music out there that I haven't heard/got that I would like, certainly so in the case of classical music given the huge repertoire that exists, but given that I have a core of music to which I frequently return because of my liking for it, and already have more music than I have time to play, I do not have a burning desire to add more. Nowadays I guess I only add maybe 10-20 albums a year, typically from stumbing across something of interest, whether from some observation on this forum prompting me to seek out and listen, or through friends or even, or, rarely, hearing on the radio when driving, otherwise I will have the occasional mini spending spree and seek out maybe up to half a dozen albums exploring some particular area of classical music. 

I usually play from a selection of the albums of a limited number of artists. Most of my stored or even hardware music doesn't get played. Like most I think, I can't get rid of a lot of it "just in case".

Which is dumb I guess these days as it pretty certain I could find at least an MP3 version of most of what I want to listen to, but I don't like to listen to MP3s.

I often listen in random mode and find some tracks keep popping up repeatedly. I removed all ratings in metadata thinking this might have something to do with it and even suspected some sort of smart logic in my player software but both theories were dispelled.

Then I discovered the Birthday Paradox

''In probability theory, the birthday problem or birthday paradox concerns the probability that, in a set of randomly chosen people, some pair of them will have the same birthday. ... However, 99.9% probability is reached with just 70 people, and 50% probability with 23 people.'

The thing is that birthdays aren't evenly distributed over the 365 days of the year because for various reasons couples are more inclined to get it on at some times than others.  Hence you reach 99% probability with fewer people than you would expect. 

I doubt the birthday paradox is the explanation for the behaviour of your shuffle mode. 

Olly

The birthday paradox actually assumes that there is an equal probability of people having been born on each day of the year. So it seems that when couples get it on is irrelevant in the standard mathematical version of the problem, even if it might have an influence on real world instances.

I believe the shuffle mode thing happens because players use a 'seed', a starting number to generate their 'random' track order. It's not genuinely random. If the players used a variable seed (eg the current number of minutes past the hour) I suspect that we'd get apparently more random track orders. But as it is, I find that shuffle modes tend to like certain tracks or artists more than others too.

My car stereo runs off an SD card, and it seems to love Faith No More and Napalm Death. But I don't think it's randomly played a Bach track ever. Maybe Octavias are just head bangers.

Every time I open the app/artist I try and choose a different letter to scroll through, so as to pick something new.

Consciousmess posted:

You may have 10,00[0+]+ albums or 2[0]Tb music, but do you often return to the same albums or tracks?

Don't spoil what you have with what you wish for!

Yes, but before I had what I know now I was looking and searching for the same.  Have I arrived now at a point that I can just live in the past hooked on a few revelatory victories?  No!  To keep growing I have to keep looking and searching for what I do not know currently exists but for what I have the faith to believe that I might find through constant diligence sprinkled with a few dollops of serendipity. 

In hindsight, one can always say that it is a costly business to buy tens of thousands of albums just to find x or xx or xxx albums that have changed your life for the better.  But who can do this without the experience of taking chances where you obviously lose a lot more than you win?  It is the one in a million victories though that are so sweet.  

Their are always albums that intrigue me for whatever reason and usually when this happens I focus on that album or track for weeks or months extracting everything good and pleasurable out of it that I can.  This may be from the disc that just came in the post or a disc I bought 30 years ago and just discovered its power over me today.  

If I drew a line in the sand last December 31st (the day before making a new years resolution to quit or change something) like I always do but never obviously succeeded in doing then I would not be enjoying what I am today because I never would have found it.

Life is a balance of living in the past but not being afraid of reaching for what the future may bring us.

I am not willing (yet) to give up hope for new joy that can be found tomorrow if I look for it.

Cbr600 posted:

My input varies a little.

You might think this a waste, but I find it a good way to be nitro diced to new artists and music. Hence the large catalogue.

I do like the concept of being 'nitro diced' to new artists! Don't you just love the auto complete text feature?

As for the subject of the thread, like others here I still tend to play whole albums, even when playing through the NDS. I guess this is as a result of growing up with (and still using) vinyl records. I tend to play the most recent albums I've purchased quite frequently on a rolling basis, returning to old favourites now and again. I grew up loving The Who, Yes, Caravan etc. and in my late teens and twenties got very much into Led Zeppelin. Many of these albums have become long term favourites, each holding special memories, but curiously I find it very difficult (almost unbearable) listening to Led Zeppelin nowadays. 

Clive B posted:

As for the subject of the thread, like others here I still tend to play whole albums, even when playing through the NDS. I guess this is as a result of growing up with (and still using) vinyl records. I tend to play the most recent albums I've purchased quite frequently on a rolling basis, returning to old favourites now and again. I grew up loving The Who, Yes, Caravan etc. and in my late teens and twenties got very much into Led Zeppelin. Many of these albums have become long term favourites, each holding special memories, but curiously I find it very difficult (almost unbearable) listening to Led Zeppelin nowadays. 

Read that just when I was about to choose the next album - thaks for the suggestion, LZII soinds as good as it dod to me as my intro to them 48 years ago! And playing at a 'realistic' level!