Another end of the CD article

This could be a boom for people like us, people who still want physical media. I would never trust in a music library built on a computer hard drive.

This might be like the 90s, where people dumped all their vinyl and people like us scarfed it up at bargain prices.

Evan

 

I'm a tactile kind of person. I need to have the physical product to touch and see and feel. As long as CD's are around I'll buy them.

 

There are plenty of backup solutions, and you could always create a copy of your entire hard drive and store it off-site. If anything, it's safer than keeping everything on physical media and storing it in one location; fires, floods, earthquakes, and thieves can wipes it out pretty quick and there is no way to recover it.

 

I guess this is another aspect where we differ; I'm far too lazy to do all that work in the first place.

 

It's certainly not something I'd want to do again.

 

If people continue dumping their CDs, I hope there will be people out there to buy them.

 

I DO like to see my stuff, but, for me, it has come down to living comfortably, neatly, and backing up my stuff. I like having my stuff backed up in case of a disaster. And, if I have to move, having the music already packed up makes things easier. I don't plan to live in my present location forever.

My wife and I can both stream music from a central server to our stereos and not have to pick through CDs or LPs. Fewer discs get lost.

And, last, but not least, I make lots of CD-R comps. Having everything already on the computer, or available to the computer really helps!

I guess I have gotten to the point in my life where I don't need for everyone who enters my home to know what i've got.

 

That's why you back up the hard drives and don't throw out the original CDs and LPs!

 

I'm lazy, but i'm forcing myself! Right now, i'm up to "Commodores". I still have the rest of the alphabet, several boxed sets, a lot of various artists CDs, and a bunch of soundtracks still left to go. I've been ripping CDs all day and last night, and i'm still not done with the "C" section.

 

Chicken Little says the sky is falling. Or is that the little boy who cries wolf?

Ridiculous article written in ridiculously bad manner.

Wow-wee .......CDs converted to mp3! Yippie

Let the race to the bottom, begin.

 

Screw the hard drives, and yes to your second point.

Evan

 

I also plan to start copying all of my vinyl and CDs onto a hard drive, probably within the next year or so. But I have no plans to get rid of them. It would be easier when we have get-togethers just to have everything at the click of a mouse, rather than playing DJ; plus I could have all the different single/album mixes of songs side by side...

 

Would this be the appropriate place to ask what lossless format you all are using? Grant, what led you to choose FLAC. (Basically, I'm trying to decide between FLAC & Apple Lossless. Those seem to be the leaders, with Windows Media Lossless a very distant third.) I'd really like to see a comparison of the advantages & disadvantages of each format.

Dexter

 

Agreed-
5-String

 

Exactly why i don't bother to use the PC for listening to music files.I like CDs.They will be my final format.I like to have to find a specific album,open it,hold the disc put it in the cd player and press play.
Of course i use mp3s and flacs on my Kenwood and Cowon DAP players when i'm out of home.But never in my listening room.No sir .

 

As someone who's completely replaced physical media with digital (while keeping a handful of box sets and rare items)- no, I don't care about looking at music or what other people think when they see my apartment. Yes I used to have walls full of thousands of CDs. So what?

Music is an audio thing. Everything else is just nonsense. Frankly I'm surprised by how much people are concerned with look and touch on a forum dedicated to sound.

 

I use FLAC. I don't have an iPod so there was really no point in Apple lossless. There's a nice free winamp plug in as well as a lot of free, simple players that handle FLAC (I use Foobar @ work). My Squeezebox handles FLAC beautifully.

 

The interesting thing about each article that I read on this subject is that 500 million cds are sold each year and its something like 7 million downloaded songs......Its been 5 yrs already and it hasn't approached the number of cds sold.
So far, I see downloaded music as the big hype that isn't.
If I want the whole album, its less of a pain to go to the store than to sit at my computer and download it.

 

Uh you didn't really read the article didn't you? (see quote below) For many of us, wasting our time going to a store is a pain. I'm wasting my time, hence it cost me even more to buy an album. Time in my life is precious, I'd rather do other things. Anybody who goes "I like going through the CD's with my fingers" is just preconceptions. You like doing this because you've never done it another way.


Some of you also go "Oh no, I don't want to listen to a computer", well sorry we're in 2008 it's completely irrelevant. You are listening to CD's on a piece of electronic equipment that's almost exactly like a computer. In fact the differences are minimal in the ages of NAS and Squeezebox.

 

Missed that figure.
Actually, I've download whole albums and I generally prefer having the cd over downloading it.

 

To any of you who have downloaded albums but also have a CD copy of it:

How is the sound quality in comparison?

Evan

 

This is such a large question. The obvious will pin-point out itunes, while others will tell you that some companies offer the same quality (lossless) as the Redbook CD standard. Some even offer better!

Moore's law as always will give us better quality overall with time, and soon you'll have entire libraries to buy that are lossless. The days of 128kbps mp3 are long over.


Once you've cloned your HD and you have it in a different physical space, you simply cannot have a failure unless you are really unlucky and you loose the second hard drive before changing the faulty one. I bet you have more chance of loosing your entire CD collection than that!

 

From the article:

"I don't miss going in a record store and being intimidated. You had to find where you needed to go to look for new music. Then there was so much to thumb through. Then you had to go to the listening station and hope the music was even there."

What one listener considers a chore, another considers a joy. If you don't have (or want to take) the time to delve into looking for music, so be it. Some prefer to grab a particular title and go, as can be done online. I like to linger in a store. Some of the greatest finds of my collection have come from doing so. The card catalog in my mind may occasionally stumble upon an obscure title I've been hoping to find for a decade, maybe two. It happens all the time. It's a comparison between two kinds of mission -- a concentrated search or a hunt for buried treasure. Some would rather forgo the latter altogether. I do a little of both.

The people in the article may be music lovers, but I doubt they're collectors. As far as I can tell, that's the primary difference. Most listeners aren't necessarily collectors. That's why their CDs are scattered all over the floors of their car interiors, scuffed up seemingly beyond all playability. We all know these people. They're the same ones who in the future will wind up doing a load of laundry with a USB stick left in a jeans pocket. This kind of thing wouldn't even occur to some of us. I've read the lengths to which some of you go to preserve your precious possessions, and you know who you are!

Bottom line: I like my stuff. Hard as it is for me to imagine that someone else might not have the same love of the physical product, I suppose it's down to that hazy intersection of personal and generational preferences. But the CD isn't going away just yet.

 

Good points

In fact, this is how I built up a big part of my collection - lingering in stores has provided me with treasures that I wouldn't have come across while searching the internet (supposed I use the internet because I don't have much time on my hands - otherwise the internet can be a source of treasures too).

And yes, I know who I am...

 

Well, 128kbps AAC is alive and well-ish at the iTunes store.

Isn't it also possible that the music industry might try control its IP a little by never releasing lossless files of new material, in a post-CD era?

Tim