Seldom without a computer of some sort since graduating from the University of British Columbia in 1978, I have been a full-time Linux user since 2005, a full-time Solaris and SunOS user from 1986 through 2005, and UNIX System V user before that.
On the technical side of things, I have spent a great deal of my career as a consultant, doing data analysis and visualization; especially spatial data analysis. I have a substantial amount of related programming experience, using C, awk, Java, Python, PostgreSQL, PostGIS and lately Groovy. I'm looking at Julia with great interest. I have also built a few desktop and web-based applications, primarily in Java and lately in Grails with lots of JavaScript on the front end and PostgreSQL as my database of choice.
Aside from that, I spend a considerable amount of time writing proposals, technical reports and - of course - stuff on https://www.opensource.com.
Authored Comments
Thanks for the comment, John. Lollypop is brand new to me. Certainly an attractive web page! I've added it to my list to review. Great pointer.
Thanks for your comments, Frans.
I've added both Aqualung and Goggles to my review list. I really appreciate those recommendations.
I also really enjoyed reading your reasons for liking / disliking players. Your reasons are well thought out and as you say a bit different than mine. A few comments of my own:
- as far as I know, I only have FLAC and MP3 files (maybe there is an ogg or two), and I don't notice gaps in playback. that's not to say they aren't there; they just aren't "in my face". I'll try to pay better attention. In this respect Aqualung looks pretty serious.
- I like the idea of replay gain as applied to some of my older CDs which are often 6dB or more down, but I'm not keen about having my music player / computer resampling stuff. I have thought about dealing with some particular sinners with Audacity, but that's a future project.
- I don't find myself adding files while I'm listening. Not sure why that is, I guess that's just the way my workflow happens. So I've never had an issue with the UI freezing up on me because of this.
- good audio quality - I think we are agreed there! - and to me that means passing the bits on through to the DAC without futzing with them.
Again, thanks for your thoughtful comments!