back to the future: buying CD's again...

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Poll: CD's in 2019...yay or nay?
yes back to the future! I prefer them over online/MP3
52%
 52%  [18]
no i'm brand new, you're retro! I prefer convenience & can't hear/don't mind/disagree with quality differences
23%
 23%  [8]
being a hipster's cool (I prefer vinyl)
23%
 23%  [8]
Total Votes : 34

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dholl





  • #21
  • Posted: 02/14/2019 13:02
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Jimmy Dread wrote:
Why does preferring vinyl make you a hipster?


i don't know, mate.






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dholl





  • #22
  • Posted: 02/14/2019 13:05
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davidhuret wrote:
Whatever the format but my preference still goes, easily, hands down, to cd's for that unique balance of convenience, ritual, audio quality and durability: some of my cd's are 35+ years old and still in pristine condition, and not because thay've been forgotten on a shelf. Quite the contrary.


aye, some cd's can get pretty scratched but they'll still play. only ever had a couple which skipped and that's when a scratch is deep.

iwonder how long the laser-reading tech of CD players will last? anyone still using their 90's CD players?
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dholl





  • #23
  • Posted: 02/14/2019 13:07
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Patman360 wrote:
Like 99% of my music listening these days is online, I just travel too much for work, though I've still got a decent collection of CD's and vinyl filling up space in parents house...


good point. i work from home nowadays so big reason why cd's work for me once more.
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dholl





  • #24
  • Posted: 02/14/2019 13:08
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baystateoftheart wrote:
Digital music is best at one thing, and vinyl is best at another. CDs are an unsatisfying compromise.


what are vinyls best at? taking up space?
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dholl





  • #25
  • Posted: 02/14/2019 13:09
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Norman Bates wrote:
I do still buy a lot of CDs - used only, mind you. I never pay more than €1 per CD, 2 at most if it's a Normcore item I don't already own. Generally I get them at my local charity shop for 50c on the CD.

I do the same with my vinyl records as well, mind you. Except I pay them €3 tops, the only exception being if it's gonna be a present - such as my Valentine present this year, a Talulah Gosh compy on vinyl.



aye, €3 is about my limit with the exception of Floyd and my top 40.
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dholl





  • #26
  • Posted: 02/14/2019 13:17
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sethmadsen wrote:
Oddly enough I just recently saw the prices of CD and thought 1) Damn, why did I get rid of my CD's in 2011ish, and 2) jeez, I could buy like 10 albums for the price of one if I went CD again (not always). I haven't done it because my desktop and my car are the only things with CD players now and then I thought about the difference of having to carry around CD's vs just having them on my phone.

But yes, CD's do deliver a standard of quality you just can't get from Streaming services 100% of the time. If you don't have a great connection or pending on stuff with things, your stream isn't guaranteed to be at a high quality, even if you have a premium service. They'd prefer to drop the quality of the song than make you wait for it... especially since 50% of the time you won't even notice. At least this is my theory on why the exact same song from two different streaming services or played from digital collection all 3 sound completely different at times.

Sometimes I'm not the most careful with my hands so sometimes I'll get a scratch on my vinyl or cd by having the case of the butterfingers. Somehow moving my record player to another location in my house has made that true with my vinyl. I think it's because the record player is higher so it feels more a balancing act to get records in and out of the sleeve. So this is the beef I have with maintaining the physical thing.

But then if I'm strictly digital, I do loose some kind of value to the music. I'm not sure what that is or why that means that. Strictly streaming devalues the musical experience somehow but I can't really put my finger on exactly how.


the devalueing you speak of is present also in musik-production: nowadays musicians & producers have everything in virtual software form...limitless possibilities. yet who really believes contemporary pop musik is better now than it was in the 80's & 90's?

with a CD collection we limit ourselves, and thus value more what we're experiencing. i've experienced this these last few days of CD-listening, appreciating previously ignored album tracks and the like.

regarding your cd player, i also only had the one in the PC, so i went on ebay and bought a Sony Discman for €6...hooked its headphones-out to my studio monitors and already i'm hearing superior sound. gonna look at a better CD-playing system, something with L&R 6.3mm Jack-outputs.
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dholl





  • #27
  • Posted: 02/14/2019 13:20
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Jimmy Dread wrote:
Surely a lot of the 'audio quality' part of this debate would rest on what equipment you're playing your stuff on. A crappy 128kbps mp3 is not going to sound anywhere near as good as a FLAC file, which I'd imagine given the right set-up would easily rival CD quality. But if you listen to any digital file on crappy Apple buds or some sub-standard PC speakers then it's never going to sound as good as even the cheapest CD player.

As for the 'ritualistic' side of things, it's true that getting off one's arse to stick a record on or a CD in a tray requires more effort than pressing a couple of icons on a touchscreen, but if you want to listen to an album from start to finish how it's consumed shouldn't really matter. The only difference I can see is that with a physical format you could flop on your beanbag, read the sleeve notes or whatever, and get swallowed up in the experience. But who's to say that you couldn't do something similar (i.e. check out reviews, Wikipedia entries, etc.) when streaming something off your phone.

No, the issue for me is that with streaming/digital media there is far too much temptation to flip before the album's done with, i.e. listen to something else to interrupt the flow. It's like having the TV remote in your hand - the urge to hop about is too tempting, especially when streaming services churn up a load of recommendations for you to check out based on your current listening choice. That said, streaming is great for discovering new things, and without it (and sites like this) my record collection wouldn't be anywhere near the size it is. But if I love it enough I have to own it - maybe a generational thing, I dunno.

I think the importance of having a collection, especially for those of my age, can't be understated. The first thing I remember doing when I was a student to suss someone out was to flick through what records or CDs they owned. It was almost like a window into their soul, or little signposts in their life and the experiences they'd had along the way. I could probably tell you where I bought every single one of my records from, and there's nothing more satisfying than showing off your collection to like-minded music nerds.

I'm likely far too old to be a hipster, but since a fair bit of the music I love was only ever available on vinyl when I first bought it that's my format of choice. I can't see me dashing back to CDs in a hurry, despite having hundreds of them sat in a box and a pretty decent CD player to spin them on. They just don't sound the same as putting a record on, the sound of which I much prefer. I'm not saying vinyl's better than CD - I just dig it more.


good post. the issue i always had with FLAC or WAV was it being difficult to find albums that were available in those uncompressed formats (one could rip the audio from a CD, but that's a lot of work).
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dholl





  • #28
  • Posted: 02/14/2019 13:24
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Yann wrote:
Not everyone who prefer vinyl are hipsters, but loving vinyl is a hipster trend !


true dat, tho' maybe CD's are due being hipstery?

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/...rmat-music
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dholl





  • #29
  • Posted: 02/14/2019 13:28
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Jimmy Dread wrote:
A hipster can be easily identified as:

1. Those who refer to 'records' as 'vinyls', and
2. Those who buy said 'vinyls' but never listen to them


the 2nd point is the basis for this article:

https://qz.com/103785/hipsters-are-buyi...-them/amp/

tho' i've been guilty of buying books and never reading them...
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dholl





  • #30
  • Posted: 02/14/2019 13:33
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sethmadsen wrote:


Agreed. I do find myself sometimes getting so immersed in the Wikipedia articles and the such that sometimes I have to start a track over or I find myself halfway through an album before I realize I'm halfway through the album but only really heard one song... haha. Not disagreeing with you, just sharing my experience in the digital world.



haha nice observation! done that too. since rediscovering CDs i've had albums on while cooking or tidying or otherwise focussed in a non-reading way...been great as the senses are able to multi-task effectively enough so you can listen to the musik properly.
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