Continuing with CDs?

so i wanted to hear shadows and light and it's basically the same price for a used cd+postage as it is on itunes/amazon/etc. i'm not complaining, it's just ... big sigh, i don't want the cd but i want to be able to hear the album as i please and not give my money to itunes/amazon.

Qobuz lets you buy downloads too. You can check first if an album
Is for sale there.

Poster ufo steered me toward a place called 7digital in another thread - in the context of major-label releases that aren’t on CD (“7digital is where you want to go to buy mp3s from artists that aren't on bandcamp”).

i think the best way to do it is by going to joni's site. you can click on the amazon link from there in order to make here a little commission in addition to whatever else.

better still, you could get the files on slsk and put the money you save towards a t-shirt on her web store

make her*

i've had success with qobuz. they don't sell mp3s, though, if that's what you're looking for. https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/album/shadows-and-light-joni-mitchell/0603497922789

Try Dearborn music.net. I'm not sure how it works but in addition to a good stock of physical releases they seemingly offer mp3 downloads of everything.the digital content comes via something called Broadtime Tuneportals. Dearborn Music is a legit business so I assume these downloads are also legit. Btw they also seem to have a cheap DVD of shadows and light. Caveat their search is not the best.

thanks all — got it sorted!

how did you like shadows and light? used to own the album, remember it as uneven but with some highlights

oh, i've always loved it - just never had a proper copy. hejira and mingus have always been my favorite joni so i've just been youtubeing it the past year or so. it's `fusion joni`, but i don't mind the solos - always a pleasure to hear pat metheny and jaco, in any case! and plus, it has an ace meditation on "amelia."

nice, I'll revisit it

listening to the Amelia now, incredible

15 reasons why I STILL BUY CDs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfbzH6gCXp4

Video was way too long. I only made it to reason number one...

But yeah I still buy CDs. Partially giving up on vinyl. Prices have got ridiculous and I'm running out of space. I still have room for about 150 more CDs though.

Spotify sucks but I'm begrudgingly sticking with it to check out new music (and buy what I love) plus listen to songs I love but don't own.

I really hope the much vaunted CD revival doesn't happen. I love picking up gems for peanuts. Long may that continue...

I recently replaced all my jewel cases with sleeves (https://spacesavingsleeves.com/) and reduced my rack space by about 50%. Now I don't feel the pressure to sell stuff every year to make space for incoming CDs.

I wish those plastic sleeves had been around 25 years ago bc I went straight from jewel cases to binders, in the process discarding all the back cover inserts from my collection. With the sleeves it's easy to keep those.

I want to get those, but most of my shelves are set up in a way that I have the CDs stacked horizontally, rather than vertically (I know, I know, it is what it is until I can replace all the shelves too). I'm not sure those would work well stacked horizontally, but maybe I'm wrong.

No, they'd all fall off the racks as they're pretty slippery. My only complaint is it's harder to see the spine when you cram a ton of them together (and even when you don't as they fold inconsistently).

Yeah, that's what I figured, and why I've held off until I can upgrade my shelves. But good CD specific shelves are harder to find.

Yeah the cost of vinyl is too ridiculous for me to take it up. I may buy audiophile releases, specifically SACD's, but that's still a very niche market that doesn't always cater to my tastes, so in total it ends up being less than 10 discs per year. (I think I bought only three or four audiophile SACD's last year.) The rest of the time it's mostly $5-10 used CD's.

Sleeves are tempting, but I decided against moving in that direction for a good reason. I used to have two cases of CD's in sleeves sitting open next to the shelves, and I listened to those discs a lot less than the ones in jewel cases on the shelves. Unless I was actively looking for a specific title, I wasn't going to pull it, but if I'm scanning the jewel cases spines and come across something, I usually think "oh, I'll listen to that too." What I've done since is keep the main collection in jewel cases and reserved the sleeves in the cases for reference CD-R's, stuff I wanted to hold on to but didn't consider to be my primary listening. (Second-rate bootleg recordings, compilations for artists I should have just because they're somewhat notable even though I don't like them, etc.)

May have posted in this very thread already--but in 2021 I finally found durable (non-MDF), dismantleable/reassembleable, not terribly ugly, high capacity, relatively affordable CD shelves:

https://theatlanticstore.com/maxsteel-multimedia-rack-gunmetal/

If you shop around you should be able to find them for under $100/per. I tried to comission custom non-built-in shelves but had two people flake on me, so gave up and then found these. They're a little "industrial" but they work very well:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FbgqYLTX0AUyGQF?format=jpg&name=large

xp Ha, if we all disclosed our unique approach to picking what to listen to, half of us would be candidates for serious OCD meds!

Now that's a room I could spend some time in, very nice!

yep that's what I have and I love it xxp

Damn fine sight! (Love the Bergman and Varda box sets, good picks!) That's actually the setup I'd want to have and did at my last place, but unfortunately, lack of space and too much shit breaking up my current walls meant switching to towers. It does save a LOT of space, but I feel like Indiana Jones navigating a columned tomb of ancient culture.

how do those wire racks handle nonstandard CD cases? like stuff that's an inch or so bigger/smaller than a jewel case?

it can accommodate the larger sized digipaks (those "LP replica" sleeves) but those are only like 1/4" taller than a jewel case. However, the shelving can be adjusted to give more height to each row if you want.

that’s crazy, I had that exact same style of rack in high school (smaller of course!)

Yep the shelves slot in at 1" height increments, and so set up for CDs there's about an inch of extra clearance over a standard jewel case (similar if you set up shelves for blu ray). LP style, small box sets, etc. all fit fine. Technically there's room to get one more shelf of CDs than what comes with a unit, so if you can buy spare shelves or multiple units you'll exceed the capacity per unit they indicate.

I need to see what capacity I really need, because three of those might do the trick

I was in this thread! But I don't think I answered the question. I grew up at a time when vinyl was dead as a doornail and so a lot of the music I listened to was on CD, and there are a few things from the early-1990s that were never pressed on vinyl and haven't been re-released physically, or were only repressed fairly recently. e.g. Sarah McLachlan's Fumbling Towards Ecstacy, which didn't come out on vinyl until 2016, or Jane Siberry's When I Was a Boy, which has never been released on vinyl at all. In those cases the vinyl tends to be expensive 180gm stuff that's aimed at people who buy one copy for the record shelf, a second copy that they technically evaluate twice, and a third copy that they keep sealed.

Morning Dove White by One Dove was pressed on vinyl when it was new but has never been repressed. Ditto the early albums by Lush and a tonne of Britpop acts. Mark Hollis' solo album came out on vinyl in 2003 but apparently the pressing was duff, and it wasn't repressed for years. I'm getting a weird feeling of deju vu at this point. Have I already written this? And of course Billie Piper's Honey to the B and Walk of Life have never been available on vinyl either, which for me invalidates the entire format. The same goes for B*Witched's two albums. And until very recently - literally this month - Aqua's first two albums were CD-only. They have recently been repressed on coloured vinyl in Estonia. My point is that on an emotional level CD was my childhood. It is real and vinyl is the oddball. Vinyl is the format of obscure 1970s psychedelic music that appears on the YouTube sidebar, not normal music that you listen to.

I buy most of my music digitally but I do spring for CDs every now and again. I'm getting an uncompressed 44khz/16-bit master copy that's easily portable. I honestly can't remember the last time I listened to something on CD though. Did you know that the PlayStation 4 couldn't read CDs? I remember being shocked by that. It had no problem with DVDs and Blu-Rays, it just couldn't read CDs. Either the laser or the firmware didn't support it. I've spent my life with computers and high-tech, but I have a huge blind spot in the consumer market. It strikes me that if someone - a normal person - asked me to recommend a CD player I would have no idea what to say. Sony doesn't make them any more. Amazon has lots of identical, imaginary-brand imports.

I think wanting a CD player would disqualify someone from being a "normal person" in 2022, but here's some options: https://www.crutchfield.com/g_53100/CD-Players.html?tp=197

I recently found an Oppo blu ray player that I'm using to listen to CDs. They are well regarded but I can't say I hear a difference between it and the early 2000s Sony DVD player I was using before.

Re: storage, I use an Ikea Billy bookcase with a tonne of extra shelves. I have more than 600 CDs and it's nowhere near capacity yet. Here's an example of someone else's setup: https://www.reddit.com/r/Cd_collectors/comments/ifhlmt/an_update_on_the_ikea_billy_bookcase_to_cd_rack/

I don't use spacers like the Reddit poster. I actually like the extra space up front - it makes it look less monolithic, and I have a few trinkets in front of the CDs on some of the shelves to add visual appeal. Of course you have to move the trinkets to grab some of the discs, but it's no big deal.

As for a CD player, I have the Yamaha CD-NT670, which doubles as a DAC and digital streamer. Spotify integration is pretty seamless. It's reasonably priced and widely available. Hooked up to my vintage Luxman L3 amp and a pair of Elac Debut B5.2 speakers, it's a pretty sweet sounding setup for well under $2k. I also have a passive volume controller (no remotes on those old amps!) plus a Pro-Ject Debut 2 turntable with an Ortofon 2M Red cartridge. All pretty midrange/affordable but it's nice enough for my listening purposes. Don't want to fall down the audiophile rabbit hole... Less money for more CDs!

I've been having the vague desire to buy a small/portable CD player, as I don't seem to have managed to have kept any. But it's really pointless--I have all of my CDs ripped to at least 320kbps mp3 (which sounds good to my decidedly non-golden ears), and on a 1TB microSD card in my phone. So it would be pure folly to pull out a CD and directly listen to it, and I could obviously play one in my 4k blu ray player... If any real companies still made one, I'd probably still get one anyway...

Don't know why I never thought of doubling up the Billy shelves like that!

Yeah I thought I was the smartest girl ever when I thought of using the Billy for CDs. Turns out heaps of people got there before me, of course!

I also use an Ikea Kallax for LPs but that's a well known hack. I read somewhere they were actually designed to fit records? But yeah, guess I'm an Ikea fan when it comes to physical media.

Just to capture the name, since this might be the third time I've forgotten, I love the Ikea Robin cd shelves, particularly the royal blue color. Discontinued, but fits 15+ in jewel cases for each of the 14 sections (7 x 2) in a unit.

G McBB, thanks for the sleeve tip!
I am planning a move soon, so I think those will really help out...
Do you use their inner sleeve things for double cds?

Morning Dove White by One Dove was pressed on vinyl when it was new but has never been repressed. Ditto the early albums by Lush and a tonne of Britpop acts.

ok i am intrigued - how are those space-saving sleeves at protecting the CD's playing surface?

Reddit Billy dude is an absolute amateur: the spacers in normal, sane people’s Billys are hundreds of lesser CDs that you don’t need spine-out, but want to keep around in case of reference.

Yeah I'm sorting through a lot of stuff I've kept in Caselogics for a while and making a distinction between those where the booklets actually have liner notes of relevance/interest and those that don't -- for the former I'm thinking I may get those sleeves, though like Josefa, sadly no back covers were kept. Ah well!

Just gotta decide if my CD shelf needs to go entirely (sell 'em all) or needs to grow large enough to be a striking design feature in the room it resides in.

I've been having the vague desire to buy a small/portable CD player, as I don't seem to have managed to have kept any. But it's really pointless

I use Billy too. Each shelf is about 1.5x full - full row pushed to the back and half the shelf full in front of that, so that I have to shove that front row of CDs back and forth to see what's behind. Not completely ideal but it's the best solution given the space I have.

My parents still have a wood or particle board CD shelf they bought for the family in the '90s. It's designed to hold 512 CD's but they use it for random junk now, stuff that's actually got plenty of weight to it, and surprisingly the shelves still look perfectly straight. I wish I knew the manufacturer because at one point in the '10s, I bought shelves that cosmetically looked like the same model, albeit in black (theirs is "natural wood" color), and the shelves would be visibly bowed after six months, meaning you had to flip them. I've since disposed of them, but it's clear whoever made that one in the '90s really knew what they were doing.

Slowsquatch asked: "Do you use their inner sleeve things for double cds?"

Double CDs are easy to handle - one disc is paired with the front cover on the left side, another with the back insert on the right. I didn't feel the need to use any inner sleeves.

Emsworth asked: "how are those space-saving sleeves at protecting the CD's playing surface?"

They work fine as far as I can tell. I'm not particularly rough with CDs, nor do I take them out of the house. They sit on my racks and occasionally get pulled out for liner note review.

Because you can cram even more on a rack, when you pull one out there won't be a convenient hole in the row like there was with jewel cases, though!

ok i am intrigued - how are those space-saving sleeves at protecting the CD's playing surface?

Most of my CDs don't have their playing side touching the plastic, but they've somehow actually got a plastic material that doesn't seem to degrade and doesn't stick to itself or other things like CDs.
They last well and are protective.
Main issue I have is that the last batch or two I've had don't always fit the tray/spine paper well, so that when you fold them (taking care to only bend the paper at the seam of the outer spine), the inner plastic gets slightly folded over itself. It's fine but not perfectly neat, ya know?

thanks Raven and Gerald, I guess I will order a batch and see how I go

It’s worth noting that the vulnerable part of a CD is the label side - that’s the stamped audio with a thin metal coating and then lacquer on top. The play side is thick polycarbonate and can be buffed out quite deeply. But once a seller taped a rare CD I bought into the tray for “safe postage” and the tape lifted off the label, the lacquer and the metal, so the disc was totally unplayable.

Very true. The worst came from Nimbus's pressing plants. For a long time their lacquer formulation was pretty terrible - it got sticky and attracted dust and debris, but it was also risky to stick in certain CD sleeves, especially ones that had no cloth liner. (I want to say PVC sleeves could be especially destructive.) If you tried cleaning the under running water, the lacquer actually immediately absorb the water and would break apart and rinse off. Sometimes there was another layer of lacquer that would remain intact so the metal substrate would stay the same, but I've had one disc where the metal actually began to dissolve around the hub. Nimbus eventually changed their lacquer formulation, but you can always spot the old one - when it's humid, just touch the hub area where there's no data encoded, and you see how sticky it is.

Also be careful with plastic sleeves and CD-R's. Some plastic material like PVC can potentially stick to CD-R labels, usually the early "printable" formulations on some brands like Kodak and Mitsui, and it'll actually peel off the label WITH the reflective layer underneath, rendering a large part of the disc unreadable.