So now that I’m actually self hosting my own music collection (which I’ll write more about soon), something I’ve noticed is that music sounds better now.

It isn’t actually better, though. I always listened to lossless when I could and close to it when I couldn’t. Besides, I’m no audiophile. But it does sound better now. I’ve decided the reason behind this is entirely because now it’s being streamed from my own server and it’s music I own.

There’s the old addage that food tastes better when you make it yourself, and I think this music thing is the same phenomenon. It’s my music, so there’s something in my brain that makes it sound better.

I’ve discovered a few bands that I haven’t heard in years, I’ve made some new playlists, and basically been enjoying music more than I have since Limewire was a thing. For those of you born in the late 00’s, Limewire was this thing we had that allowed us to download whatever we wanted. It was Napster before Napster. If you don’t know what Napster was, go look it up.

I think this feeling will continue. I’m going to expand my library over time, I’m going to continue improving the metadata, and it’s just going to be awesome.

I did end up switching from Jellyfin for music to Navidrome. Jellyfin was slower than you know what once the library got over a certain size, even after the metadata sweep was done. Navidrome is much, much faster.