Continuing with CDs?

if you are anal about ripping things to your own personal specifications, rip your own

otherwise yeah soulseek is faster

I've never thought to rip from multiple drives at once!

Semi-offtopic, but ok, so one sets an external USB drive to a specific DVD region and we have a few chances to switch it before its locked. If I have more than one external drive, can I set one to region 1, another to region 2? or is that locked in the OS for all external drives? I've never owned more than one at a time to try.

Last weekend I got a CD boombox for the bedroom! I'm having so much fun! I can listen to my "Sounds Of The Planets" Voyager recordings CDs on a loop when I go to bed! There's a lot of great 90's free jazz that only came out on CD! What a delightful format. I don't have to flip the record. If I'm asleep when it ends, it will either turn itself off or play again - i don't have to get up and manually turn it off.

I DO wish the car speakers didn't rattle -- it's a problem for a lot of CDs i own, that i have to burn the bass down to prevent the rattle.

I had time to kill before a movie recently so I went into the kinda punk rock record store near washington square park. i got some cheap CDs by Lucinda Williams, a gamelan ensemble, Masaki Batoh, and Charley Patton. $2-3. What a bargain!

ian I relate to this so hard. cd boombox and cheap cds....bliss

The amount of CDs by great-and-popular artists I find at thrift stores is astounding. Classics everywhere. Stacks of Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Coltrane, Miles Davis, The Byrds et al. And you know, i'll happily pay $10 for that Michael Hurley CD too, or for that Ocora CD, cuz they are cool, and maybe they are not available in any other physical format.

I blew out the stock speakers in my Saturn station wagon with a Belle and Sebastian CD.

Even rare, collectible CDs that are $15-20 at saavy stores are a good deal compared to reissue vinyl anyway.

CDs! Who could’ve imagined?

Kind of sad that a good "collectible" CD price these days is essentially the original retail price, but great for buyers!

Semi-offtopic, but ok, so one sets an external USB drive to a specific DVD region and we have a few chances to switch it before its locked. If I have more than one external drive, can I set one to region 1, another to region 2? or is that locked in the OS for all external drives? I've never owned more than one at a time to try.

That sort of locking usually happens in the firmware of the drive (five changes are usually the limit) so you should be able to set different drives to different regions. Alternately, MakeMKV (what most people use to rip video discs) doesn't care about region coding, nor does VLC (what many people use to view DVDs in their computers). Also, flashing the firmware of your drive with a LibreDrive or other version can either reset your region change count or disable it altogether. So you have options, depending on how tech-saavy you are.

I have ~2400 CDs, many of which I ripped a *long* time ago. I'd love to have them as FLAC or even just higher bitrate MP3s. I must overcome my laziness and just get ripping.

― Duke, Monday, February 12, 2024 9:05 PM bookmarkflaglink

the fastest way to rip your CDs is to download someone else's, just torrent or soulseek what you can

I blew out the stock speakers in my Saturn station wagon with a Belle and Sebastian CD.

Yr station wagon is trying to tell you something

Is there any reason to rip your own cds when Soulseek is faster?

only if you care about a specific CD edition you can't find anywhere else

I DO wish the car speakers didn't rattle -- it's a problem for a lot of CDs i own, that i have to burn the bass down to prevent the rattle.

― ian, Monday, February 12, 2024 7:59 PM (yesterday)

how old's yr car? speakers could be due for a replacement

I don't want some rando's unsecure rip of a CD that I own, how do I know they aren't sharing some FLAC transcoded from some coked-out WMA files originally optimized for their Zune player? I'll save that embrace of the unknown for stuff I can't otherwise find or afford to buy.

yes, i've seen the wacky ideas of metadata that some people have from the suggestions that come back from freedb.

anyway, can't remember where i saw this first, maybe it was here:

Mom refuses to throw out her CDs.
I'm on the mom's side. pic.twitter.com/XaSRBG6G7B

— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) February 9, 2024

xxp sounds like the woofer might be ripped. or screws need to be tightened

Google how to replace on your car. if it's not a complete ordeal to do, even the cheapest car speakers tend to sound totally fine.

or i mean just adjust balance for now to basically disable the bad one(s) for the moment

I don't listen to vinyl, but I still buy them as gifts to a few close relatives who love them and live a good distance from the city - they all prefer vintage vinyl, so it requires a bit of work, not just ordering the latest release. I was in a Brooklyn record store earlier this year and they were playing a copy of The Pretenders which just came in - love it to bits, and my partner loves "Brass in Pocket," but we couldn't even enjoy it because 15 seconds into that song, it started to skip, missing whole verses as a result. I was like "this is why I don't give a shit about vinyl."

Got THAT right.

haha! sock it to em!

i own thousands of records and none of them skip. it can happen though. to be fair, i buy really clean records.

i finally have a semi-decent set-up in my bedroom with a nice turntable (old pioneer) and big speakers i am fond of (old pioneer) and the thing i can never get over is how different good records sound compared to anything else that you can listen to. a CD and streaming and MP3 and FLAC, etc, have a similar vibe to me. the digital vibe. and i listen to them plenty. but songs that i hear on the radio - digitally on fm - a million times will often sound WILDLY different in their original vinyl form. just your everyday 60s and 70s pop songs. that glorious bassline that starts "jump into the fire"? so massive and crunchy and absolutely not what you hear at CVS when you listen on vinyl. so, there is that. i don't usually do the *you haven't even HEARD....until you've heard this vinyl pressing...* thing to people but...its really true. and even more true when it comes to 45s or 12-inch singles. they are a completely different listening experience. but if you don't know that it doesn't really matter. what you don't know won't hurt you. (i think of all the god-like reggae singles i've listened to that have some of the most amazing sound i've ever heard and then i think of how flat and lifeless they sound on cheapo CD comps or on Youtube.) but, whatever. its just cool. that live studio sound of vinyl. you can hear the rooms that they were recorded in. live ghosts! anything recorded on tape should be considered a field recording. they made the first black sabbath album in what...3 days? have you ever heard that album on vinyl? how in the world..? sorry for rambling. art is my majik. it all sounds like magic to me.

<3

xp often the difference is mastering for quality vs mastering for digital cut through. I could play you dozens of CDs where you can hear the room and thrill to the dynamics of every instrument. I’m glad you love your records tho - love is the reason for art anyway.

i gotta say, steely dan on vinyl sounds so much different than the super clean digital remaster japan market CD releases

Seems like bad form for a record shop to play a skippy record for everybody like that.

still sounds better than a skipping CD

sometimes I listen to records playing in record stores and I'm like "are you trying to put people off this format??" - terrible distortion, skips & pops, dirty records, shit system - like the shittiest CD master or MP3 would sound worlds better

I do have records that skip but not many

there have been records I have heard on vinyl for the first time that have been total revelations

BUT there have also been records that sounded tinny and constrained to me and hearing them on CD for the first time was like a relief, like finally this sounds good - I kinda think some albums just never had a good OG vinyl pressing and digital remasters totally rehabilitated them

I kinda think some albums just never had a good OG vinyl pressing and digital remasters totally rehabilitated them

I do agree with this in certain very limited cases - Sun Ra on Saturn, the Sema albums, ESP releases, some other stuff

xp often the difference is mastering for quality vs mastering for digital cut through. I could play you dozens of CDs where you can hear the room and thrill to the dynamics of every instrument. I’m glad you love your records tho - love is the reason for art anyway.

oops that was in response to Scott

jeez, sorry, Zing crashed

that's why my browser is vinyl-based

Pono-browser or GTFO!

Seems like bad form for a record shop to play a skippy record for everybody like that.

I'm guessing they had a batch come in and they were just testing them out, but it was clearly for everyone in the store - like the sleeve was put up vertically on a stand at the counter that indicated this is what we're hearing.

But yeah, the short answer really is, it's not the format, it's how it's cut or mastered, and most of the time that ends up making the format a moot point to me.

To use The Pretenders as an example, a good chunk of that album had been released earlier on singles. (Learning to Crawl, my other favorite Pretenders album, is like that as well.) When they made the LP master, they didn't splice together a master tape from the first-generation single masters, they dubbed those down on to another tape and IIRC it wasn't a flat copy either. When MFSL decided to reissue the album decades later, they did what no pressing had done before with the help of DSD technology - they went back to the original first-generation masters of each song, captured each one in DSD 256, and digitally put them together with no generational loss. This became the master for their SACD and they even cut a vinyl release from the same DSD master they created too. Whichever format you pick, it sounds amazing and IMHO cleaner, clearer and more immediate than past releases on CD or LP.

"xp often the difference is mastering for quality vs mastering for digital cut through. I could play you dozens of CDs where you can hear the room and thrill to the dynamics of every instrument"

oh yah for sure i've heard plenty of great CDs. i was talking mainly about old records that were recorded on tape and then put on vinyl and tape. and people who never hear them and only know that music from radio/streaming/CD might not understand why record people like records so much.
honestly, when all is said and done, i kinda can't believe there hasn't been more of a hepcat resurgence in reel to reel tape and players because they sound best of all. an original pre-recorded reel in good shape sounds ungodly. i've said this before and and i'll say it just once more to be annoying but i have a friend who puts factory-made reel to reel tapes of random albums on CD for me and he does nothing but a little noise reduction and those CDs he has made for me on 10 cent CDr are some of the best CD sounds i've ever heard in my life. because the tapes sound so good! they are huge and have crazy depth. kinda like how i will often prefer a very clean vinyl copy of an old album recorded onto a good cassette to a CD reissue and will get comments from people in the store when i'm playing a good tape taken from vinyl and will not get those comments if i play the CD. unless its a Kompakt CD. i have never played a Kompakt CD in the store and not been asked by multiple people what i was playing. even old people! my marantz must like microhouse. they really pop. every CD should be made like whoever makes those CDs.

(if dance music people and experimental/avant garde people can make CDs that sound like a million bucks - and these are often people who don't have a million bucks to spend - why can't everyone else?)

I recently got Steely Dan’s Royal Scam on vinyl (MCA reissue so probably early 80s) and it sounds so much better than my CD (MCA Compact Price reissue so probably late 80s).

Aja on vinyl is pretty amazing, but that should be no surprise as the production was bankrolled to sound thus.

Yeah I think engineers in the 70s probably had in the back of their minds experience about what would sound good on vinyl which informed lots of little decisions. It’s not so easy to take that recording and make it sound good on CD.

Sure it is, my Aja CD sounds fucking fantastic.

I’m not saying it’s impossible, just not easy. I think the reverse is also true. New vinyl generally is no improvement over the CD (or digital file) since that institutional knowledge is lost.

i don't know what side of the argument y'all fall with regards to modern era vinyl vs CDs but i've been so cautious lately (burned by the great 4 Men With Beards wars) and really try to make sure the vinyl pressing is definitely high quality (i.e. the Stereolab reissues, Light in the Attic, Tone Poet Blue Note, Verve Acoustic, U2 reissues tbh), because sometimes i lean towards getting the CD. i think it's probably better now than the flimsy '90s but idk, i'm not one of those guys with one of those programs that shows a seismograph looking thing for audio. maybe i'm way off base.

I mean, I hear this about vinyl a lot but I've never found it to hold true in my home listening... CDs just sound better most of the time. One might argue that over time since most of my listening is digital sources that I've accumulated stereo equipment that complements those sources. I bought vinyl when I was younger because it was often significantly cheaper than the CD, or it was something that wasn't available on CD yet. But I always thought of it as a budget medium, to be put up with when necessary. Lacking even the utility of cassettes which could be listened to in the car or in a walkman.

I mean, you used to go to a record store and what they had was what you chose from, medium be damned... sure you could look for stuff, even place special orders, but if you wanted to hear it and could afford it, you bought it when it was in your hands. So I used to be fine with rough-sounding vinyl because pre-Internet it was buy the record or probably not be able to hear the album at all. Now I can check out an album online, read reviews of the mastering quality of the CD reissue, and buy that with minimal shipping fees. The album now comes before the medium, which is exactly the opposite of my formative years. The circumstances of your listening used to choose you, now you choose them.

So barring truly terrible CD mastering jobs (easy to find warnings about online), the entire idea of which medium has the edge in sound quality is just sort of alien to my process. My listening ecosystem is set up for digital. No compelling reason to fuck with it. Pretty much everything I buy on CD or FLAC sounds great. My record player(s) are there if I need them.

whatever old Canadian pressing of Aja i had sounded like trash next to whatever mastering is on Spotify. Huge variation among pressings of big releases.

(and yeah my vinyl and digital systems are comparable bla bla)

Reading a comment quite a bit up thread reminded me of the olden days when I thought my CD collection was some kind of pension fund.

I spend 95% of my time listening to digital files on my laptop, through headphones. (Good headphones, TBF — Sony MDR-7506s, which are what musicians use in the recording studio.) Speakers and vinyl vs CD affecting the sound as it floats through the room? Not really an issue.

i'm not one of those guys with one of those programs that shows a seismograph looking thing for audio.

lol, it me