Continuing with CDs?

I semi-share the "physical possessions begone" optimism but on the other side these possessions still exist they're just possessed by corporate monoliths we rent them from

― da croupier, Thursday, April 23, 2015 2:25 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idg how this applies to an mp3 - though it's a reason i'm not down with streaming - but my "physical possessions begone" isn't a principle of optimism as literally a comment pertaining to clutter in the home

don't understand the act of "ripping it to digital" right away.. are you doing this so that you don't have to physically handle the artefact? so you can listen to it on your computer/personal device?

tarfumes, i am keeping my minty german copy of tommy handy for when you come to the store! gonna crank it up for you. sounds like a dream...

looking forward to it!

― scott seward, Thursday, April 23, 2015 10:35 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Woo-hoo! Thanks, Scott! I too am looking forward to it!

are you doing this so that you don't have to physically handle the artefact? so you can listen to it on your computer/personal device?

― braunld (Lowell N. Behold'n), Thursday, April 23, 2015 2:38 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bc there is no longer a device in my house that plays CDs

Ripping it to digital allows you to take it with you on your commute, at the office, etc.

bc there is no longer a device in my house that plays CDs

What about the thing you ripped it with? /pedant

I also like to create mixes that involve my recent additions. xp

i don't think it's ever occurred to me to PLAY a CD in my laptop before!

speaking of which - in my experience it's cd players that tend to conk out and stop working sooner than the cds themselves. I used to have an almost masonic ritual I would go through when putting cds on my old AIWA stereo - 'You have to put the cd in, press on top of the CD drawer until it spins while holding down the ff button or else it won't play'.

I use binders. It was an incredible relief to throw out all that useless plastic. If I hadn't, I'd have to have another room in my apartment by now. Anyway, there's always digipaks to use for conspicuous display.

I have plenty of '80s CDs and have not noticed any of them getting quieter. Some were quieter than vinyl to begin with though, as mentioned above due to mastering. For example my Exposé 12" singles are way more booming than the Exposé CD from 1987. Manufactured CDs did get louder across the board around 1990 - maybe that's what makes '80s CDs seem defective?

Was at a party the other day and the host had cassette and boom box. Putting the tape (The Bangles' All Over the Place) in the box and pressing play felt like using a Victrola!

I have a Marantz CD+FM+DAB+streaming receiver thing now (with a turntable and "Smart" BluRay-player plugged in) and I guess its use breaks down as something like 10% vinyl, 10% CD, 20% TV, 20% radio, 40% Spotify (whether direct or AirPlay from my phone app - sometimes the former doesn't work and the interface for the latter is better).

I have a bookcase of 200+ CDs* next to the couch, all my vinyl in Traby units underneath the speakers and a massive drawer unit in the bedroom with everything else in it (1000+ CDs, MiniDiscs, DVDs, etc). This seems to work for me now.

CDs aren't getting quieter, you're getting deafer.

That asterisk was supposed to say something about it being purely alphabetical (got the bookcase before the drawer unit) rather than a curated subset. It's A through E, basically. I'm fine for Eno and Autechre.

xp

Oh, and in theory I could AirPlay anything from my iTunes library (assuming my external HDDs were plugged into my laptop) to the stereo but in practice this doesn't work. AirPlay icon goes amber, disappears. Which means I'm missing out on entire episodes of Hancock's Half Hour and dozens and dozens of "Track 1", "Track 2", etc untagged scree.

I have a Sonos now and it is mostly great, apart from my internet connection being shit. Overall though for a small room it's got a real wallop to it.

My parents lovingly stacked all my CDs and vinyl in cupboards in my old childhood room, it was a nice thing to come home to at Christmas despite not being able to play them.

don't understand the act of "ripping it to digital" right away.. are you doing this so that you don't have to physically handle the artefact? so you can listen to it on your computer/personal device?

I do it so I can play things on my portable FLAC player, which I mostly use to do a radio show - the station no longer has a cassette deck.

idg how this applies to an mp3 - though it's a reason i'm not down with streaming - but my "physical possessions begone" isn't a principle of optimism as literally a comment pertaining to clutter in the home

― lex pretend, Thursday, April 23, 2015 2:37 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

seriously not trying to pick a fight, but you wrote i feel like society moving away from physical possessions is only a mark of progress.

omg stop being the worst kind of pedant srsly

"society" encompasses quality of life as well as macro socio-economic factors as well u know

i'm sorry i misunderstood your statement - usually when people talk about "moving away from possessions is great for society" they don't just mean "less clutter" so i pointed out the flipside of that optimism.

yes i was exaggerating for effect, perfectly understandable if you didn't get it seeing as i've never exaggerated before

why are you mad

you explained what you meant and i apologized and explained what i reacted to. do we really need the "fuck you for not getting it right out the gate" talk?

you do it quite a lot and it feels like a spillover of those twitter dudes who feel the need to pedantically factcheck the most innocuous tweets ppl make

I think this case is a pretty understandable misread though.

i'm sorry our previous interactions have you on the defensive - that factors into why i said "honestly not trying to pick a fight"

"i think it's great as a culture we're moving away from owning music" is statement i've heard from plenty of people, most memorably jace clayton in an interview. it's not an obvious absurd exaggeration, it's a common idealistic sentiment.

yes but you see being needlessly pedantic after that phrase kinda negated it, as it usually does

xp

also i don't believe in the slightest you actually misunderstood for more than a second

i'm not sure what i did to make you this contemptuous but you get a third sorry and i'm leaving at that

leaving it at that, rather. not stomping out of a benign thread about cds or anything.

Ripping it to digital allows you to take it with you on your commute, at the office, etc.

i rip to a network storage device, which means i can pump the mp3s into my amp using the Sonos Connect gadget.
the quality is seriously so much better than using your audio output of your laptop.
also means i dont have to dig through my 5000+ cd collection to play anything, i just select it in the sonos application, and off it goes.

love it.

also, i have got some original vinyl pressings, and the equivalent (normally remastered) cd.
and having done a like for like comparison, for quite a few situations that i have this for : ELO, Cabaret Voltaire, The The, Madness, ABC, Human League, Foetus, ZTT, etc etc,

i definitely know which i prefer.

yes, i know it's probably due to limits of my entry level record deck (pro-ject debut), but still ..

Well, I just got a new CD player (the old one stopped working; I did um and ah about it a bit, as 99% of my listening is now mp3), so yeah.

My logic was a little shaky though: I need a new CD player so my thousands of old CDs aren't a complete waste of space, even if I barely listen to them, because I can't bring myself to get rid of them, especially now they're no longer worth anything to sell. And I worry that CD players may be getting less reliable and more expensive to replace. My father bought the family's first CD player in 1990 and it still works. My last CD player lasted just a few years. The new one is pretty plasticky so who knows how long it's got.

I don't get vinyl. Not for albums, anyway; I used to love buying a handful of 99p 7"s by bands I'd barely heard of every week, or getting admittedly childish "in on a secret" thrills from finding an obscure 7" with a sheaf of fliers for other obscure records/zines or a cryptic barely-labelled electronic 12". But LPs I used to buy only because they were cheap, for all the reasons 誤訳侮辱 said, and now they are not cheap: most of the new LPs in my local record store are at least £18-20 or even more, and they're not even any better pressed than the things I bought only reluctantly in the 90s to listen to on my cheap record deck through a veil of mysterious noise which might have been ground hum or surface noise or a dodgy stylus (though it never went away when I replaced the stylus) or a billion other things.

OK, that was my equipment's fault and not necessarily vinyl's, but I suspect the student-aged people I see buying vinyl are playing it on cheap gear or not at all, too.

lol yeah, they are using the download code and mounting the unplayed record in a frame on their wall

(shakes fist at cloud)

XXP sonos is great
I buy CDs if I like a whole album (rare) because my car is old and only has a CD player. I even make mix CDs for it!

i have no idea whether it's a more accurate or clear sound or whatever, but i love the sound of old records - authenticity fetish, lifestyle choice, whatever. i find it warm and pleasant. i can see my CDs going before I stop playing vinyl - the number of albums I love that aren't on streaming or easily findable on used LP relatively small, and while it sucks on principle that stuff gets lost in the cracks, there's only so many hours in the day to revisit them anyway

i was playing CDs in the car but my number of commutes dropped recently so i've just been flipping the dial on sirius, so currently the cds are just there for security and posterity, with records played if i'm chilling and reading and streaming played if i'm at my laptop

sound-wise, CDs have just gotten better. just in time for nobody to listen to them. some of the crazy dvd-audio CDs i've heard, man oh man, it's like listening in 5D. it really is the way to go with electronic music. and electro-acoustic music.

yeah someday i'd love to have all music i listen to coming through the same awesome system (that i don't currently own). until then any assessment of formats is filtered through the shit speaker they're coming out of

it just makes sense to listen to laptop music on your laptop. new digital studio recordings on CD or DVD. old analog recordings on vinyl or reel-to-reel tape. in my opinion. not that i listen to reel-to-reel tape. but in a perfect world. i think a well-made cd is the happy medium though. you are more likely to hear a satisfying recording that way. vinyl can involve a lot of trial and error to find the right pressing/copy and obviously most people don't want to go through all that. and if sound quality isn't your first concern, than streaming/MP3 makes sense too.

so when will the CD revival happen? 2025?

it's already begun with me! i find great used cds all the time now for cheap. and so much of it is already out of print. random reissues and old rap and metal cds. now is a good time to go through the cd bins.

plus, the PS1 i use as a cd player is the best cd player i've ever had. i love playing stuff on it. first cd player i've ever really enjoyed! i'm back to the future....

scott tells the truth.
as i have said elsewhere, cd bins/charity shops are fantastic at the moment.
i live in a small little town, and people are offloading their cds to the local charity shops at quite a pace meaning i am stocking up for little ££ outlay.
long may it continue.

i was learning some Zulu today on CD. language instruction CDs are big in our house. you can find them in book stores now for nothing.

somewhere I read that those PS1 things have really good DAC circuitry, I should track one down

that 'somewhere' was probably scott on another thread.
i had no idea until he mentioned it here.
i have since been asking people i know if they have an old ps1 they want to bin/donate to a worthy cause !

I feel like people are speaking at odds through some of this thread though. Depends what genres and styles, different releases are directed to different formats. This is an obvious point, but the idea that there is Platonic ideal of a record is a fiction. These things are technically accomplished in specific ways, and that can also mean that there are artists who are not striving for an ideal of CD high fidelity. It's an obvious point, but I still feel like it needs to be said.

just looked on Craigslist and PS1s are $10-$30, totally gonna get one

Is that original PS1's or do PSOnes count as well?

You've got me wondering wth even happened to my original ps1. It seems to have just disappeared.

do you have it hooked up to a tv and controller to use the PS 1 as a CD player?