Does anyone else here still enjoy buying CDs, either used or new?

I still choose to buy the substantial majority of old music on CD, usually secondhand. In an era of streaming, I still see some advantages of doing so:

*Most CDs released since the mid 1990s have brickwall compression applied at the mastering stage to make them louder, which results in a lower dynamic range and can cause mild distortion. Many older releases from prior to this have since been remastered (with brickwall compression applied) and these remasters tend to be the only versions available on streaming platforms. An original CD of these releases from the 1980s or early 1990s will lack the brickwall compression present on remasters, and will generally sound more dynamic and punchier as a result, even though it will not generally be as loud (fixable by turning your volume up).

*I like to have a legitimate offline, DRM-free lossless copy of my music. Some online stores such as Bandcamp offer FLAC downloads of CD quality but their selection is generally limited to independent artists - the major labels sadly don't seem to be interested. The major online legal download services typically only offer tracks at MP3 quality, and historically some major label downloads (I think mostly UMG tracks) featured audible watermarking (in an effort to make piracy easier to trace) not present on CDs making their quality worse than an MP3 quality CD rip.

*I still have an MP3 player that theoretically supports up to about 1TB of storage via 2x MicroSD slots, and have Rockbox (an open source player firmware) installed on it, with nearly all of my tracks, mainly CD rips, being in the FLAC format, which is of WAV/CD quality but uses lossless compression meaning that files are typically only about 2/3 the size while sounding exactly the same bit for bit. Rockbox has far better equalisation settings than what you find on most smartphones, and music sounds far less muddy on it, plus my player is a model designed for the internal Chinese market that ignores EU headphone volume restrictions. My music when played through Rockbox sounds about on a par with a Technics CD player from 30 years ago, which tended to sound very nice.

I'd like to know if any others here are similar to me when it comes to this?

Reply 1

StriderHort

21

Nah I'm glad to be seeing the back of the nasty things :tongue:

I'm hoping to look back on them as a blip before we moved to better digital formats.

Not that I don't have lots of good memories of them, my first CD player (Amiga A570), Playstations, burning your own discs etc. but they were just so damned flimsy :mad:

I don't think I ever lost a vinyl to damage and maybe 3-4 cassette tapes over my youth, but lost scores and scores of CDs, plus I've never seen another medium beyond paper actually rot over time. :colonhash:

(Although you've reminded me of those weird disc caddies my Amiga CD player needed :tongue:

)

(edited 1 year ago)

Reply 2

RJDG14

OP

16

Original post by StriderHort

Nah I'm glad to be seeing the back of the nasty things :tongue:

I'm hoping to look back on them as a blip before we moved to better digital formats.

Not that I don't have lots of good memories of them, my first CD player (Amiga A570), Playstations, burning your own discs etc. but they were just so damned flimsy :mad:

I don't think I ever lost a vinyl to damage and maybe 3-4 cassette tapes over my youth, but lost scores and scores of CDs, plus I've never seen another medium beyond paper actually rot over time. :colonhash:

(Although you've reminded me of those weird disc caddies my Amiga CD player needed :tongue:

)

I'd have said that vinyl was more flimsy than CDs. CDs are somewhat prone to scratches but this can be mitigated by keeping them in their boxes when not in use. Tapes were prone to breaking if you had a faulty player. The majority of CDs are not prone to rotting although some of the ones made in the UK by PDO in the late 1980s and early 1990s did rot due to a manufacturing flaw.

Reply 3

Emma:-)

Entertainment Forum Helper

19

Original post by RJDG14

I still choose to buy the substantial majority of old music on CD, usually secondhand. In an era of streaming, I still see some advantages of doing so:

*Most CDs released since the mid 1990s have brickwall compression applied at the mastering stage to make them louder, which results in a lower dynamic range and can cause mild distortion. Many older releases from prior to this have since been remastered (with brickwall compression applied) and these remasters tend to be the only versions available on streaming platforms. An original CD of these releases from the 1980s or early 1990s will lack the brickwall compression present on remasters, and will generally sound more dynamic and punchier as a result, even though it will not generally be as loud (fixable by turning your volume up).

*I like to have a legitimate offline, DRM-free lossless copy of my music. Some online stores such as Bandcamp offer FLAC downloads of CD quality but their selection is generally limited to independent artists - the major labels sadly don't seem to be interested. The major online legal download services typically only offer tracks at MP3 quality, and historically some major label downloads (I think mostly UMG tracks) featured audible watermarking (in an effort to make piracy easier to trace) not present on CDs making their quality worse than an MP3 quality CD rip.

*I still have an MP3 player that theoretically supports up to about 1TB of storage via 2x MicroSD slots, and have Rockbox (an open source player firmware) installed on it, with nearly all of my tracks, mainly CD rips, being in the FLAC format, which is of WAV/CD quality but uses lossless compression meaning that files are typically only about 2/3 the size while sounding exactly the same bit for bit. Rockbox has far better equalisation settings than what you find on most smartphones, and music sounds far less muddy on it, plus my player is a model designed for the internal Chinese market that ignores EU headphone volume restrictions. My music when played through Rockbox sounds about on a par with a Technics CD player from 30 years ago, which tended to sound very nice.

I'd like to know if any others here are similar to me when it comes to this?

I still by cds.
I can listen to stuff on youtube etc, but with the singers and bands that i like, i like to have the CD's so i can listen to them whenever, in the car etc.