How Do You Listen? Daily Music Formats & Habits

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Just curious about a couple of things and thought a poll might be the easiest way to explore them:

  1. I wanted to see how the polling feature works on this forum and how people engage with it.
  2. I’m also interested in learning how everyone here actually listens to music day to day.

Please select all formats you regularly use:

  • Streaming (any service or platform)
  • Vinyl (turntable playback)
  • CD/SACD/DVD (physical digital media)
  • Magnetic Tape (reel-to-reel, cassette, etc.)
0 voters

Feel free to expand in the comments as well. I’d enjoy hearing about your daily listening habits, how and when you listen, why you gravitate toward certain formats, and whether your choices change depending on mood, time, or setting.

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Streaming for me about 90% of the time. It’s simply the most convenient and fits my daily routine—easy access, huge catalog, and instant discovery. The remaining 10% is split between vinyl and CD, usually when I want to slow things down and listen more deliberately. Vinyl for those moments when the ritual matters, and CD when I want a physical copy with consistent, no-nonsense playback. Working diligently to work my way back from primarily streaming to physical media however.

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Streaming for background in the house. For serious listening, mostly CD and on rare occasion vinyl.

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4

100% for background. 99% streaming, 1% FLAC rips for intentional listening which is heavily biased to headphones lately.

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5

I listen to a rather good FM classical service from NPR during the day.

My serious listening is all CDs/SACDs.

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6

Wow, completely forgot about radio and satellite

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Heh, ironic about mentioning radio. There isn’t a single radio station worth listening to in our area, and this is a larger market. The only times I have used it in the past 15 or so years is when I’ve installed a head unit in a car, to make sure the antenna is connected properly. :smiley:

For the rest of my habits (music, anyway) and formats…

On my main system, usually it’s about 50/50 vinyl and AirLens streamer.

But there is always music in the house. My desktop system plays while I’m working. The old JVC mini-system in the kitchen has a small streamer attached to its AUX input, so that runs for a couple hours during dinner. Working outdoors, it’s a JBL Boombox 2 fed from either Roon or the Qobuz app through whichever old phone I take out there with me (Roon is sometimes fussy when the WiFi signal is weak). So for all of these, I’m streaming.

I only chose physical media since technically, I use either an SD card or USB stick in the head units in our cars, as I’ve loaded them up with FLAC and high-res files. They are all copied from the music server, which streams music to any device around the house, via Roon, and Roon also adds Qobuz and Internet radio to my mix.

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Try the Jazz deVille app in Hi Rez Radio from the Netherlands, a choice of jazz, party, chill or groove. I listen to Groove. Highly recommend it.

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For me, probably 60% sacd/cd/blu-ray/DVD-A, another 30% d/l’d Flac and DSD files, 10% Qobuz.

10

CDs, SACDs, vinyl. No streaming here.

1 Like
11

Based on responses, I would argue the survey should consider adding two or three additional categories:

  1. Radio (as in over-the-air)
  2. Radio (as in streaming

Then separate out the “streaming” choice to

  1. Streaming service
  2. Home streaming (DSD or ???)
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I don’t use a streaming service per se but over 90% of my listening is to CDs that I’ve ripped or downloaded albums. Most of that is on external hard drives or thumb drives either attached to my PC and then via JRiver or Foobar2000 over the network to my DS Sr. DAC or Oppo 105D. The rest are shiny discs.

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13

I like adding over the air. I lumped local FM station content via TuneIn into streaming.

14

Sometimes I just hum.

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I tried to include Radio (satellite, FM/AM, HD Radio, internet radio streams) as a listening option, but polls can only be edited within the first five minutes after posting.

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Purely acoustic. No subscription required. I like it.

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:slightly_smiling_face: You just reminded me that the admin at an industrial plant I worked at many years ago told me she knew I was coming down the hall because she could hear me whistling the Andy Griffith show theme song.

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My most often listened music recently is from the files that I purchased (many online sources including Qobuz, HDTT, NativeDSD, and a few others). The great things about Roon is that I can just hit the folder or subfolders and it will play all songs within them. Most of my files are DSD256 which ensure I am listening to the highest quality. Of course I never finish them because that will take weeks.

The funny thing is that I seldom sit in the sweet spot that I spent so much time to set the speakers. Most of the time I sit on the dinning tables in front of PC screen 20’ away, or working on something at the bar :grin:. Often I practice golf putting and swings standing in front of the system too. My system sounds great anywhere in the room when the great recordings are on (thanks to FR30) which helps a great deal.:person_golfing:

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19

I like this. It means you have incorporated music into your life.

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So in summary I asked people how they listen to music each day. I made a poll with choices like streaming, CDs, vinyl, and tapes.

Most people said they use streaming because it’s easy, but they still use CDs, vinyl, or high-quality files when they really want to sit and listen closely. Some people only use physical music, some mix streaming and downloads, and a few listen to radio in the background. One person joked that they sometimes just hum.

Overall, the discussion shows that people enjoy music in many ways—sometimes seriously, sometimes casually—and it’s a regular part of everyday life. Results are pretty much as expected. Thanks to all that participated.