# Looking to build a collection



## dewray (Jul 17, 2008)

My daughter gave me a forty gigabyte iPod for my 70th birthday and I am looking a for a site with a large downloadable compilation of works. What I am having a hard time finding is entire symphonies ect. compiled from the Baroque Period forward. Is there a site where i can purchase music that is organized into a repertoire of notable works.

Thanks,
Dewray

(sorry for the miss spelling, I am quite inept with technology)


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## opus67 (Jan 30, 2007)

Hello, dewray. Welcome to TC!

While I cannot vouch for this site, as I have never used it, classicsonline.com seems like something you're looking for.


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## Yagan Kiely (Feb 6, 2008)

Wow, never thought I'd meet a 70yo online.

Try the store that comes with iTunes. I don't personally like their restrictions (I advise you read the user agreement etc.), they have a very conclusive collection of pieces.


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## Krummhorn (Feb 18, 2007)

Hi Dewray, 

Welcome to the forum ... and Happy Birthday (I turned 60 this year!!)


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## Artemis (Dec 8, 2007)

dewray said:


> My daughter gave me a forty gigabyte iPod for my 70th birthday and I am looking a for a site with a large downloadable compilation of works. What I am having a hard time finding is entire symphonies ect. compiled from the Baroque Period forward. Is there a site where i can purchase music that is organized into a repertoire of notable works.
> 
> Thanks,
> Dewray
> ...


If you are starting a classical collection from scratch, I would suggest you:

(i) First investigate the kind of classical music you want to listen to, and draw up a list. For example, picking up your comment above, there are no Baroque symphonies. These started later mainly with Haydn who wrote 104, many of which are pretty lack-lustre. The same applies to many of Mozart's symphonies which only become interesting to a general listener from No 25 upwards.

(ii) Next investigate the particular versions of these works you want, in respect of orchestras/artists, as there's a great deal of choice on the market and they're not all good.

(iii) Then buy CD versions rather than download files. The quality of CDs is far above that of downloaded material which is often only available at 128 kbps and usually comes with restrictions on use (eg you can't burn to a CD etc). If you go to places like Amazon the prices of CDs are not too bad compared with generally higher prices from high street retailers. Generally, I only buy top quality labels, but that's a foible I've always had in classical music.

Personally I found my ipod to be 5 minute wonder and I hardly use it. But if you want to give it a go (and I suspect you do) I would suggest you create MP3 versions from the CDs at the highest setting of 320 kbps, at which level the sound is OK provided you get a decent headset. If you don't get on with the ipod, or if you get bored with it, you'll still have the CDs to fall back to.

Assuming you are looking for some guidance in what to buy, you might look at the following thread which is very interesting:http://www.talkclassical.com/2791-my-basic-repertoire-list.html

You might also look at the ArkivMusic website:http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/main.jsp. Go to each of the big-name composers, and you will see lists of their most popular works. Not all genres may appeal to you, but you will know that among those that do you will be buying material that appeals to the majority of customers.

There are also other music forums which specialise in creating "sticky" lists of the best material by genre/composer.


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## Guest (Jul 18, 2008)

Yagan Kiely said:


> Wow, never thought I'd meet a 70yo online.


Where the hell have you been , there are many of us, its only the flesh that gets older the mind is a huge storage of all sorts of useless information. Although I must admit con fusion can be a problem .  Your time will come. 
*dewray* good to meet another Mature, Intelligent, good looking fellow, you may find that only small bits are available for D/L at free sites, to get decent complete works you will probably have to pay,
I can tell that you are not new to online forums.


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## Yagan Kiely (Feb 6, 2008)

> Where the hell have you been


More 'geekier' forums - 5 years actually. Just passed my 10,000th post infact.



> there are many of us


Not in the geek community - oldest is ~30.


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## Guest (Jul 18, 2008)

Well you would not find many of us going to that type of forum, far too advanced for most of us, so you are excused. Do you keep a count of all your posts?


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## Yagan Kiely (Feb 6, 2008)

No, but I take note of large milestones. Such as 5,000 and 10,000. That said I didn't make any deal about 5,000.


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## bexterlee (Apr 22, 2008)

I would certainly recommend classicalsonline.com


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I use my iPod a lot, but for audiobooks and podcast discussion of classical music, not so much for the music itself. 

The problem with download sites is many of them break pieces up in unpleasant ways. For instance, many works have movements that should flow into each other without a break, but with downloading the movements each get their own files so there is a gap in the playback. Some also normalize the mp3's -- that is, make them all the same volume, so that quiet slow movements may come out the same volume level as full orchestra. 

I couldn't tolerate this, so I learned to make my own mp3's from CDs. It wasn't all that hard to figure out. So now my Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 5 is on 2 mp3's -- movement 1 on one, and movements 2 and 3 without break on the other. This works much better for me.


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## Rondo (Jul 11, 2007)

I've always found ArkivMusic.com to be very helpful. It has a pretty exhaustive search tool (search by composer, or conductor, etc...), and specializes in old or out-of-print albums. *However*, there are no downloads, just CDs.


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