Continuing with CDs?

I will never, ever understand people's affection for vinyl, especially not people younger than me. I'm 43, so I was already buying music before CDs were introduced, and I fucking hated records as a kid. If they didn't get scratched enough to skip, they still sounded like ass, all crackly and getting a little worse every time you played them; if your turntable was shitty (like mine was), the speed wavered so the singer's voice slowed down and sped up...plus they took up so much space and my room was tiny already...a fucking terrible format. I preferred tapes to vinyl, for all of the aforementioned reasons plus portability (I was never without my walkman starting in about eighth grade), and when CDs came out I was all about that shit, and have never looked back. Now, I do 90 percent of my listening on my iPod, but I still buy and rip CDs, and every once in a while will actually throw something on the stereo and lay on the couch and listen to it.

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Wednesday, April 22, 2015 7:48 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I agree with much of this, except I remember being almost as annoyed with cassettes as I was with vinyl; the high-end always had a swooshing sound, walkmen always broke/died, and unless you remembered to clean your heads/pinch rollers, tapes would get eaten. And, as Dave Marsh wrote, "rewinding is the longest distance between any two points."

i feel that if you're going to transfer all your CDs to a binder you may as well just rip em and chuck em.

CDs don't get quieter with age u mad? they oxidise sometimes... the surface of my copy of SAWII looks like a rock pool.

- yeah it sucks having to spend 20 seconds cleaning a record. but it does actually prevent the whole "sounded like ass, all crackly and getting a little worse every time you played them" thing.

Except, there's usually more involved that using a cleaning or anti-static brush over a few revolutions of the record.

It's still staticy.

"Try rubbing alcohol, with the record laid flat on a lint-free cloth, and..."

Wow, hm, OK, let me write this down...

"Or, you could use that Spin-Clean machine."

Is that expensive?

"Nope, only $80! But you have to make sure you get the combination of distilled water and cleaning solution right."

That actually sounds a little complicated...

"Well, there's a bunch of other record-cleaning machines, usually starting around $400."

Yeah, no. Any other methods?

"Yeah, you can spread wood glue all over the LP, make sure you let it dry enough, then peel-"

[leaves, puts on CD]

i don't see that the hefty uprise in vinyl pricing has owt to do with inflation tbh. longform vhs vidoes were 9.99 in 1989 and you can get a decent DVD or Blu Ray for much the same if not less today and the quality is 5x as good. so.. you know.

One of the main reasons I like having a record player now (and yes I had records when I was younger too), is I'm not tempted to distract myself by staring at my computer or my phone or pressing skip or shuffling to a new album the second my attention wonders.
All that stuff is useful to have, but increasingly I found that so much of my music listening was spent soundtracking idle Facebook sessions. I'd spend hours making pointless playlists that I'd never listen to in full and just delete. It was wasting my time. With a record I can switch off the computer and read a book or just do something else, but with digital I find staring at the internet just too tempting.

xp What do you mean "disintegrate?" You mean oxidize? Peel? Are rendered useless?

― Jimmywine Dyspeptic, Thursday, April 23, 2015 2:37 PM (33 minutes ago)

Yes, and they get quieter, no matter how loud you set your speakers.

The other day I listened to the first CD I ever bought, an Italian bootleg of a 1968 Who show that I got in 1988. Still sounded perfect (and loud).

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, April 23, 2015 2:40 PM

That's good for you, but it is not the case for many CDs. It will depend on a lot of factors how much they disintegrate, including play counts. But it's unavoidable. It depends on how the CD was made and dyed, humidity, and light and coating layer that was used to make them.

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

at least you always own the physical product.

That's good for you, but it is not the case for many CDs. It will depend on a lot of factors how much they disintegrate, including play counts. But it's unavoidable. It depends on how the CD was made and dyed, humidity, and light and coating layer that was used to make them.

― Arctic Noon Auk, Thursday, April 23, 2015 10:20 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There were a handful of plants in the 80s (possibly until 1990) that didn't use the best, or entirely correct, processes for manufacturing CDs. A Polydor West German plant was the most notorious. The overwhelming majority of rotting/disintegrating CDs can be traced to these plants.

i like compact discs. when they sound good they can sound awesome. i find their sound just as variable as vinyl though. good/great/terrible/okay. i like records too. i don't like new records too much though. but it depends. some people do a great job with new vinyl. the making of vinyl from a cd/digital source though is just dumb. and that is mostly what you get now. i still like how vinyl sounds on tape. which is why i still make mix-tapes using good new blank tapes. my preferred method of listening to a bunch of 45s.

i flirted with spotify a couple of weeks ago and it didn't last long. i love how you can hear tons of electronic music and rap and metal, but i would have to figure out a way to listen that sounded better than on a computer or t.v. hook my stereo up to the t.v. or something. that spotify sound still reminds me of when i first heard digital radio. strangely claustrophobic and airless. in theory i am all for the streaming music thing though.

"Yes, and they get quieter, no matter how loud you set your speakers."

I don't see how this is possible. They may *seem* quieter, compared to albums made in the last 15 years, but that's down to changes in mastering preferences ("the loudness wars", etc). But a physically deteriorating CD can't get quieter. Drop-outs, skips, glitches, yes.

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!

I'm conflicted because I love having a vinyl collection but I also constantly fantasize about selling it. I don't think be able to, though. I've always been addicted to collecting yet I try to be as neat and tidy about it as possible. Here's how I store my collection:

http://i1208.photobucket.com/albums/cc364/aerialnostalgia/photo3-4.jpg

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