If you look through the lists on the previous page, you will see that my tastes in music vary greatly. I do appreciate Classical music but it is not my first choice of music, I like Jazz but mainly as background music, though I do occasionally relax at home by listening to a few albums. I also enjoy Jazz down at the Pizza Express in Dean Street. Some Pop is OK, but not much, the golden 80's are great to listen too as they are excellent, the good old Electro style of music - remember Breakdance the movie ? Blasts from the past and before hip-hop turned crap in my view.
My favourite styles of music though are the Metal genre and anything that covers lead guitar - I love the guitar as an instrument and just wish I could play it. I do occasionally attempt to learn on my guitar, but always find something else to do. I just don't have the dedication

I appreciate the work and time spent by the musicians I listen to, so while I will take an MP3 or two from different people to listen to, if I like the music I will then investigate that artists other work. If I like what I have heard, I will go off and buy their album(s) and / or DVD(s).
I will also use youtube.com to see if the artists have any video's online and make up more of an opinion from there. My other sources of new music, besides mates who provide new tracks, are the Scuzz and Kerrang TV channels. The later two are rock / metal orientated but that is fine with me. I hear a good track, make a note of the artists, hit youtube and off I go.
Youtube can also be a good way to find new artists. I recently looked on the site for Rodrigo y Gabriela's rendition of "Stairway to Heaven" and in the pick list on the side was Stanley Jordon. Watch that man finger tap the guitar....
Another source is Amazon. I often find that searching for artist x will also provide you with links to other artists in a similar vein. It can go wrong, I have bought some right shite, but it is often a good way of finding new artists.

Other ways I have found good artists in the past: Be dragged to a live concert by them, a good way to see someone for the first time (Melissa Etheridge);
Go to a website which covers one of your favourite artists, and see if there are other artists on that site which appeal http://www.favorednations.com
Wait for a band you like to tour and see who are support, or in the case of Ozzy Osbourne in late 2003, cancel the concert, but I was curious to see who the support band were. If they are with Ozzy, they can't be bad in my books (In this case, it was HIM)
and of course, finally, some record labels concentrate in a certain genre, so a lot of metal bands are on roadrunner records

If you have read this far, then you may have noticed that on the "lists", the mp3 tracks themselves are actually links. At the moment the lists only link to mp3 files which are on one of my machines at home .
I have now written some code that will take a plain text file - essentially a dir of the relevant folder - and turn it into a web page that is based on this sites design. Pretty cool.... well at least I think so. It also makes it easier for me to keep the lists upto date as I now just have to generate a new text file and leave it - no manual processing like there was originally.

The next plan is to somehow give you the option to download a playlist too. Not sure how that will work, but I will give it some thought at some stage.

OK the sad techie bit, I HAD TO DO IT, its in my nature :-)

All my CD's are generally ripped via Winamp 5.24. I use the LAME encoder as it is still the best on the market. My settings are

• VBR Mode - VBR New / Joint Stereo
• VBR Minimum bitrate - 32
• VBR Maximum bitrate - 192
• VBR Quality - High
• VBR Q - 5

Once I have ripped the tracks, I then put the tracks through the program MP3Tag to ensure the tags are in ID3v1 and ID3v2 formats
Next I will load the tracks into MP3Gain. I then run an album analysis on all tracks and then "normalise" the db level to be 89

If I am ripping the audio off a DVD, then I will use Xilisoft DVD Audio Ripper to extract the tracks. I save these into WAV format. Once I have the WAV files on my disk I then use RazorLame to convert from WAV into MP3 format, using the same settings as in WinAmp. The tracks are again then processed in MP3Tag and MP3Gain. Any converted DVD has [DVD] in the folder name to indicate this.

A you can see, I have all my music in MP3 format. I do this for a few reasons. Firstly it makes it portable so I can listen on any of the MP3 players I have, I can keep a copy of all the tracks on the in-car MP3 Player - A Dension DMP3, and also on my main network store where the music is also accessed by both my Home Theater PC, or more importantly the SlimServer which feeds music to my slimdevices http://www.slimdevices.com
The slimdevices are excellent small units and have a high quality DAC - indeed, they now have an audiophile product too. Output is via speaker, RCA connections, SPDIF and Coax. On a decent system you would use the coax or SPDIF and let your amp decode, but for me, I use the earphone socket. All the devices can be controlled centrally via the server, or hooking into its web interface remotely. They can also be configured to work as a single unit so any slimdevice you have around the house or wherever will be playing exactly the same track at the same time. I have my software running on a laptop which I chose as it allows me to run the AlienBBC plugins. These allow me to take all the BBC feeds and pass it around the system, slimdevices will also hook into shoutcast and live365 for a nigh on unlimited choice of music. As I just said, my system is running on a laptop, but many people are now running the slimserver on any number of small home NAS devices - nice if that is the way you want to run it. The units can also run without a server, they just hook onto the "SqueezeNetwork" and download music over the internet.
I currently have 2 units. The first is in the bedroom and acts as an alarm clock, as well as being a chillout area. This device is wireless and is running over my network with WPA. The second unit is a non wireless one and I tend to use that in the garage or if I am out doing some DIY. To get a "data" feed when I am in these locations I simply use a pair of homeplug units which is networking over mains - nice.