...with iTunes!
Just realized it was just over a year ago that I, the Luddite IT Guy, finally caved and began the arduous task of importing my CDs into That Infernal Computer Thing.
It started with the iPhone... when the 3G came out in Canuckistan in July '08, I knew I had to have one... I needed the e-mail functionality for work and it was just so much cooler than a Crackberry... oh and coverflow looked pretty darn neat as well.
I did throw a few albums in to iTunes as soon as I got the iPhone just to have some material on there, but didn't get serious until the end of September. Rather than sleeping for two nights in a row, I schlopped in about 200 CDs. I was pretty disgusted to find that I had to manually edit the "Sort Artist" field to get, say, Walter Becker, to show up under B rather than W... and the "Sort Album" field to get albums to show up in chronological order in coverflow on the iPhone... and that lots of album art wouldn't exactly be dead easy to find and import.............
A year later I'm still hundreds of CDs away from being fully computerized... but I do have a nicely growing, albeit anal-retentively organized iTunes library!
It certainly has changed how I listen to music... I used to do proper sit-down sessions in front of the Magneplanars, listening to full albums all the way through... I'd very rarely listen to music in the car (having only a single-shot in-dash CD thinger), never at work, never on the plane...
I bought a pair of UE triple.fis which have proven to be the best money I've ever spent on audio... no other component has brought even close to as much quantitative enjoyment. Business travel is now a pleasure. Ignoring my coworkers is an enjoyable breeze.
I had originally intended for the iTunes library to be used with the iPhone only, and for casual desktop or Airport Express listening. I'd still use CDs for the real serious stuff... so I imported everything at "iTunes Plus" specification... that didn't last very long, further cemented by the purchase of a Genesis Digital Lens, to make the Airport Express sound exactly the same as a nice CD transport... I started going lossless only in April '09 and haven't looked back... I still have piles of CDs to re-rip in lossless...
Anyway...
I can't believe it took me until late 2008 to finally get into this. Having (the lion's share of) my music collection at my fingertips has certainly changed my life for the better. I listen to music far more often. Consequently I've been forced to work at least a little bit harder to further expand my collection, an effort to which this forum has made an invaluable contribution (special thanks to 'stretch). I'm certainly in a better mood most of the time... on the other hand everyone around me has to put up with my frankly brilliant air-instrument skills far more often... but I think it balances out.
The Expanding Man......... as in "this is the day of"?
