Goodbye CDs

For me personally - it comes down to acquiring a lossless copy of every original track in it's original release format...right down to the original mastering and original timing.

So if it was - let's say - Heart - I would be on the hunt for every original CD release for it's original running order. For any Greatest Hits scenarios - they had the original 1980 double LP that ended up being edited for CD...but Steve H presided over the 1998 Hits release for Audio Fidelity with a beautiful rendering of all the original masters in their correct timings etc so I have that on the server vs the original 1980's Epic CD.

As long as I can verify an original copy of each original track - I only keep one copy of each song. So if there were 5 Heart collections out there - all with a bunch of overlap - I would only the AF release using Steve's masters.

Cheers,

VP

 

Tough questions, and that's why I wind up not getting rid of the CDs!

 

That really depends on the type of collector you are and the musical interest you have. For me it was much simpler in that my interest have always been in the primary original albums released on CD with little interest in variations of individual songs or collections and greatest hits. Of course that is a general rule but is sure makes the decision process easier.

 

Raid is not a backup solution, fyi. You'd still want backups for things that raid cannot protect against, like hitting the del button accidentally.

 

I'm with Roebeet on this one. If you do not have 3 separate backup instances of the entire FLAC library - you have a disaster waiting to happen. RAID is for disk performance (and data reduncancy) only. I would never trust any RAID system as an archive backup scenario.

I have my server drive onsite (play copy), a mirrored local drive set stored in a vault onsite and another mirrored drive set stored at the bank offsite

Remember - all the insurance riders in the world won't replace the data.

VP

 

I'm a collector, so my CD collection is comprised mostly of collectable CD's. This also means I have more than one copy of any particular CD title in my collection in most instances. I may have 3 copies of an album on CD, which might have the exact same mastering on each copy, but there are other variations for which I chose to collect it. That is the primary reason I have decided to keep all my CD's after ripping to my HD's. I don't need to sell them, and I can just box them up and store them out of the way, and dig them out individually in case I need one in the future. This is simply what works for me at this moment.

 

...and welcome right back;

 

I noticed I didn't mention the hard drives that are offsite (my wife's office), and they get brought home periodically to keep the backups current. Sorry for forgetting that.

 

kept the silvers / bye bye CD-Rs

 

Keep your CDs. One day you will want them. And they will be collectible when the MP3 zombies wake up from their Apple induced slumber. Remember the big vinyl purge of the 1990s? All those 25 cent slabs are going for $10 on in the web. The same thing will happen for the silver coasters. Trust me -- this will be the case.

 

Just wondering if this purge happened? I did a purge of a couple hundred CDs I donated to the public library a few months ago. I almost immediately regretted it and I've been buying back a lot of those CDs since. Fortunately for me most of what I am looking for can be found in the dollar bin these days.

The whole experience made me accept my love for physical media and rather trying to change this fact and accept a future world of streaming vs ownership I am embracing my need to own a collection. I've been moving all my CDs into jazz loft CDs and storing away the cases that are in good shape.

Just because the rest of the world has jumped onto this devaluation of having a relationship with music scenario doesn't mean that I have to.

 

I like to keep buying CDs. When I can get CD-quality downloads at the same price then I'll start buying those instead.

 

Me too. Thinking about Tidal though, if I can ever find out how/if it would assimilate with Logitech Squeezebox.

 

It seems to be do-able. It looks like Tidal is offering a 30 day trial. I'm going away for a week, but I plan to sign up when I get back.

 

I ripped all my CDs, well most I keep buying more and need to get a new external drive for my Mac, and put them in boxes. They don't take up much space and are available if I need them. I find it much easier to play a CD from my Mac Mini music server than it is to go to a shelf and try locate the CD I want. I have a hard enough time doing that with LPs.

Chad

 

Tidal is a step in a better direction, streaming-wise, for the artist. Without doing more for the artist, I'm afraid we'll soon be in a "buy-direct-from-artist-only" mode sooner than later, and that ain't bad necessarily. But it doesn't expose better talent quickly enough. If you're not in the know, you're sure to miss some boats. Most people don't have, or want to make, time to discover, too. I just might start up a service that tells you what you'll like. Or else. ;o)

Now, all you selling off/giving away CDs....... BUT....... keeping a copy on your drives. Yeah, don't we all not want to be that person? I mean, when you sell a car, do you retain some right to drive it from time to time? Hmmm?

 

I still have my CDs as well as my cassettes (and records too). I'm not copying or transferring anything (or throwing anything out). Then again, I don't have the collections some of you have.

 

I'm doubling down and buying a Naim CD player this weekend!
Rumours of the death of physical media are greatly exaggerated.

 

I got rid of my cassettes a few years ago because there were no more devices for playing them. This is a joke:

 

I just a got CD player hooked up to my system after years of listening only to my iPod. There is no comparison the CD system makes the iPod sound like a pile of you-know-what, and this is through a nice pair of ATH-M50 headphones. Even my speakers are subpar and I instantly fell back in love with my CDs. Well the neighbors are going to be complaining for the next few days lol.

 

Good for you! Long live physical media!

 

even if I ripped all of my CDs I would not get rid of a single one!
Vinyl? I got rid of over 10,000plus...I still have about 500 left.
Cassettes? I still have most of my needle-drops of which I made CDRs of many...and a some pre-records as well.

 

I haven't played a CD since 1998. All my music is on 1.5 TB of hard drive, which is backed up on other computers, and hard drives which I keep in the truck. When I do buy a CD, it gets transferred to the computer in .ape lossless format (which is easier to use than FLAC). It used to be that CD's were the best way to get music from one place to another. With today's high speed internet, that's not true anymore. Quite a few clients of mine download their entire projcts in one form or another.

I have a total of 3 CD's in the house.

 

Social media helps to offset some of the discovery portion. Just chatting with my neighbor the other night and I'm now listening to a new band I'd normally never know about and am really enjoying their stuff. That's all I have to contribute here, CDs are not something I prefer to keep around, that has been the case for 15 years and I'm only 35.

 

CDs are still great.

Where else are you going to get the new Steven Wilson remixes, for example? Amazon's mp3 downloads?

Don't get me wrong, network streaming is great too (but from your own hard-drive, not Spotify ). But, again, for example, where can you download the DCC gold of RAM in Flac?