Continuing with CDs?

It can also not interpret things and read it as an error. Things have gotten better, but in the earlier days, you could count on errors getting read. That's especially true when you see how people typically treat optical discs like they were indestructible or fool-proof, but even without a single scratch, fingerprint or speck of dust getting in the way, the laser could still pick up errors for many other reasons. You just rarely notice because of the massive amount of error correction built into the data encoded into the disc, and that's before you need to resort to error correction where the player tries to extrapolate the missing data, which can be hit-or-miss depending on the severity. From an audiophile perspective, or really an engineering perspective, you want as much or the actual real data read as possible - it translates into the best sound possible in terms of the info being fed into your system. Nowadays with SACD's and especially UHD's on the video side of things, errors are becoming a bigger issue because you're packing in a lot more data in the same amount of real estate, so anything like a scratch is likely to be far more harmful to how a disc is read.

and the key is covering it with a reflective layer that preserves the shape of those pits as accurately as possible while reflecting as much of the laser's light as accurately as possible.

re reflective layer : how does this all work with the all black cds (plastic) that i have a few of.
and are the black cds better/worse re scratches etc
in my simple head once i saw a black cd i thought that they would become the standard as they seem to be more robost re scratches, but out of 1000s of cd i've got, i have only ever come across a handful of them.

No idea. I thought the black CD was a cosmetic choice, not something that would actually improve anything though I'm sure there are arguments somewhere for that. Intuitively I can't see how it would really help with the laser. The black additive might make the plastic more durable, I could see that.

I got another new CD that stutters towards the end (Blind Guardian reissue of Nightfall) and I'm starting to wonder if maybe rather than being badly made, the occasionally stuttering CDs are actually a new type that my Sony player can't always cope with? I need to try more of them on my bluray player but they've mostly played fine on it but it's not ideal.

Very reluctant to look for more fancy CD players, I'm not tech-brained and my brother just bought a supposedly high end bluray player and had to get 3 replacements because they kept fucking up (different models). Seems like a small ask to have a CD player that can play any CD that isn't abused beyond repair.

@birdistheword - very interesting, are there any consumer CD players that have kept up? can't imagine sony or phillips putting out new CD players anymore tbqh

Coincidentally, I was chatting with another ILXor about CD standards yesterday; they'd recently had a conversation with a hi-fi shop employee who was bemoaning the "abandoning of the Red Book standard". I'm not too sure about that, or quite what they meant; I know that Philips were always sniffy about "Compact Disc" appearing on any products that deviated from the Red Book (dual-layer, copy-protected, etc), and there are plenty of discs that pushed tolerances to the limit to squeeze in 80-85min of content. The only playback issues I've ever had were visibly "bronzed" items, otherwise scuffed-up discs, and the occasional struggle with a very long CD. Oh, and I used to have a CD-RW burner in a desktop PC 12-15 years ago that was hit & miss - all those discs are borderline.

I only discovered this week that Linn stopped making CD players in 2010! Threw their lot in with streaming (before there was even any lossless streaming?), outrageously expensive upgrades to yr Sondek and room-modelling. (I know Linn are a very divisive name in audiophile circles anyway, and hardly a bellwether of what anyone else is doing).

I'm very used to long CDs faltering on the last track or two - poor though that is. The more strange problem I've had recently is brand new CDs, fresh out of the wrapping, not playing the *first* track or first few tracks, but then being fine from track 2, or track 6, or whatever, up to track 13, 22, or whatever.

Is that familiar? The relevant CD player still plays my old CDs fine. For that matter, one of the CDs played fine on a much cheaper and smaller device.

Can't help thinking it's something about the encounter of CD player + CD (of a certain generation?) -- both of them adequate elsewhere, just not compatible together.

> faltering on the last track or two

a lot of the time i find this is because you've fingerprints on them at the edges, not matter how careful you are.

but, yeah, not always. my copy of SAWII is particularly bad. visible scratches just through handling.

haven't really noticed issues with newer cds, mainly because i haven't bought many. i think last year's cd were mostly WIRE cover cds, the seefeel box, the Deutsche electronik musique vol 4 double and the new low CD.

SAWII -- is that a Stock Aitken & Waterman collection? You weren't content with just one??

when i rip my cds on my laptop i use an external LG optical drive, and for cds that are over 70 mins it will often spin out of control trying to rip the last track(s).
thankfully my very old Dell XP laptop is a lot less fussy and rips whatever i put in it (but due to XP - no windows media lookup functionality).
so, perhaps these cd players that don't like excessively long cds are more stringent re red book rules ?

@birdistheword - very interesting, are there any consumer CD players that have kept up? can't imagine sony or phillips putting out new CD players anymore tbqh

Sony and Phillips still do, but they're not great - I think they're mostly boombox type players. By the time they started pouring money into PlayStation and Blu-ray ten years ago, dedicated CD players made a lot less sense, especially when they wanted to push people into buying those consoles. I think that was part of the selling point, especially for PlayStation - you don't need any other console for home entertainment, just the one.

hm so are the best CD players actually blu ray players now? or are we stuck with ludicrously expensive audiophile offerings? or perhaps the mythical playstation one cd player revered by audiophiles?

Playing CDs through my Blu-Ray player and my TV's sound bar is amazing. Sunn O))) albums literally shake the floor.

i found my new BR player (2020, £70) had no audio out except via hdmi (and it had only one of those)

Sounds like you need an AV Receiver (with a bunch of channels you'll never use) for that HDMI feed, koogs. Or a soundbar (sound bar, sound bar).

There are still, surprisingly enough, CD players in a lot of micro hi-fi or all in one systems (glorified boomboxes, as birdistheword says). We got one for the 15yo for her bedroom. Everything on it worked (Bluetooth, DAB, FM, wireless charging, the USB port) - except the CD player. It's going back.

Marantz make, I think, precisely one vanilla CD player now. Everything either side of that that plays discs is streaming/radio/amp all-in-one (like my MCR610), or SACD high-end.

Marantz make, I think, precisely one vanilla CD player now.

Will it play CDs by ... Strawberry Switchblade?

Who is making reliable CD players now? I really hate that they can't even get this one thing right.

these get great reviews and i generally like yamaha a lot as a company

https://www.crutchfield.com/p_022CDS303/Yamaha-CD-S303.html

I don't think that has a headphone slot. Does freedom from stuttering new CDs have to be up in that price range?

there is digital optical out, i think, Mike, but neither my Kenwood receiver (Pro-logic!) nor my nad 350 does digital. can probably do the old minidisc-as-a-dac trick but life's too short.

i checked. hdmi and a LAN socket, nothing else. usb on the front.

you can get an external DAC for the optical out for pretty cheap these days

I don't think that has a headphone slot. Does freedom from stuttering new CDs have to be up in that price range?

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Thursday, January 6, 2022 1:38 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

as far as actual CD player CD players I don't think anyone makes much for low end stuff, obviously you can buy really cheap blu-ray or DVD players than can work - but are you trying to just use it w/headphones and not run it into an amp or receiver?

another place is ebay/craigslist, you can get stuff that was once pretty high end cd players for peanuts

shhh ...

i am beginning to feel that the tide is begining to turn re cds.
now that the format that cannot be named is getting to be priced beyond the scope of anyone other than folks who can go into space,
i have read a few articles re the revival of the cd.
this is not good for us tight f*ckers who have soaked up the cd groove in recent years ...

I feel a bit lost with regards to amps, receivers, DAC and LAN, don't know anything about that stuff. I'm not buying anytime soon so the bluray player will have to do for 5 of my stuttering CDs

(the LAN socket is just a standard wired network connection to allow the bluray player to show me netflix, not that you'd ever choose to do that because the ui looks like it was an afterthought)

((all my stereo stuff, apart from the bluray player, is 200x vintage or before and i don't really use it enough to make buying anything else worthwhile. these days it's mainly standalone pi jukebox -> amp. could do with a dab radio for the bedroom so i can stop using the tv for 6music.))

Mark E: can you point to evidence (eg: sales figures) for this revival?

bugger, they were articles that i read via some twitter pointers.

found one of them : https://www.wired.com/story/you-should-listen-to-cds/

https://www.billboard.com/pro/cd-sales-up-2021-adele-bts-taylor-swift/

I think I have a simple criterion or concern which is somewhat pertinent to choice of formats, which is basically: I don't want to have to rely on Internet access to be able to hear music.

To be sure, I am not technically adept enough even to be able to set up the kind of dedicated high quality online streaming gear now available. I can, with effort, play Spotify from a computer (with adverts); don't know how do it from a phone and don't really want to. But even if I were better at those things, I wouldn't trust my wifi not to go down, whether momentarily or for an extended time.

It follows that I would like to own my copies of things, whether those are vinyl, CD or mp3. Sadly I don't have a working cassette player anymore.

I'm surprised that online unreliability doesn't bother more people. Maybe they, being so much better at such things anyway, have better internet than me?

I don't want to have to rely on Internet access to be able to hear music.

this.

also, the random removal of catalogues when royalty disputes kick in (see four tet and ilan tapes/skee mask for recent examples)

Yes, that is also a good case, I think. I don't want to be at the mercy of external agencies deciding what's available, which could change any time - though I admit that is mostly a hypothetical problem. And I admit that I am already 'at the mercy' of eg: my own CDs functioning properly which they may not.

xp yes on both counts. Streaming's great - imagine what it was like when you had to rely on a store, library or friend having a record in order to hear it - but you have no control over the catalog or the mastering/sound quality (that alone is a big deal breaker for anyone who doesn't want all of their music brickwalled with compression). For movies, it's even worse with Netflix and other major streaming sites - you take Criterion and Kanopy out of the equation and your choices in the U.S. get incredibly bland and shitty.

https://www.bandwagon.asia/articles/watch-how-scrapped-cds-opened-china-to-rock-music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn21ywCLQTs

Xpost - yes, I’d be cool not to have to depend on the internet to be able to hear music.

shhh ...

i am beginning to feel that the tide is begining to turn re cds.
now that the format that cannot be named is getting to be priced beyond the scope of anyone other than folks who can go into space,
i have read a few articles re the revival of the cd.
this is not good for us tight f*ckers who have soaked up the cd groove in recent years ...

Imagine being able to … find new CDs in stores.

It's kind of a nice memory now driving to whatever local store and picking up an album that came out that week. Now it's been reduced to just a few trackpad clicks and waiting for it to arrive, but even before COVID, I had to appreciate the convenience since I no longer have a car and would need to take the subway to wherever.

shhhh don't tell anyone how cheap CDs are, absolutely like LPs were in the 90s, grab em now

I did actually find a used CD player recently (Sony CDP-291) for $15 in a thrift store, but I'm still importing new discs into the laptop and playing the files thru my Dragonfly, I haven't even hooked it up yet. Nice to have the option though, especially for those pesky 3" discs

On the positive side of that, sleeve - wouldn’t it be cool to be able to sell most of your used CDs to a store and get real money for them again?

for a while I was selling 100-200 of my culled ones for like $4 each/5 for $20

I am actually trying to talk a local shop (that is vinyl & tape only) into taking them

If I order my discogs collection by median sale price, probably over half the top 20-30 most expensive items are CDs

(Not a new situation, this has been the case since i started a profile approx 10 years ago - mentioned it only cos it casts interesting light on the “cds are back” vibe - for a lot of premium/rare releases the market has been pretty steady)

that's interesting, what are some examples? other than box sets and Coil CDs most of my top 250 is vinyl

having a quick look it seems like library music comps (eg this kind of thing) & some doctor who/radiophonic workshop soundtracky stuff - the broadcast CD tour EP - jan hammer's DEFINITIVE Miami Vice collection (!) - some caretaker CD-Rs - the library music album that Eno put out - plus various Aust post-punk things eg laughing clowns "official bootleg" releases - the Dogs in Space soundtrack - releases from the Apartments/Roland S Howard/David Chesworth

(with the caveat that my collection is I guess not $$$ generally, maybe some of these median sales are a bit old? and that there's some pretty good records in my collection that I haven't added!)

In London you can certainly buy new CDs in Fopp, Rough Trade East, and I think still Sister Ray. Admittedly that's a poor ratio compared the miles of HMV megastore we used to have.

Nonetheless I don't think of new CDs as hard to obtain. I just only obtain things rarely, and then listen to them a lot.

yeah, i think there's very much a us/uk divide here. that said, i don't go to many places that sell second hand CDs, maybe that's where the bargains are

I was in and shop in Chichester recently that has a great range of secondhand CDs and they're basically all £3. I always end up buying about 15 when I'm in there, and always get a discount as well. (Coltrane's Africa/Brass, Bill Evans You Must Believe in Spring, Tupelo Honey, Rhythm of the Saints, Nation of Millions to name a few.)

I'm almost scared to post/mention itas I assume someone will find out and it'll shut.

Tom Carter of Charalambides in a thread concluding CDs are indeed the way forward, though he's not thrilled about it.

Everyone in my feed decries the vinyl bottleneck, laments the unsellability of CDs and the bad quality of cassettes. Everyone loves Bandcamp, yet somehow I don't see anyone talking about BC-only releases. (A self-serving tweet perhaps but a lot of my friends are in the same boat)

— tom carter: guitar (@OmtayArtercay) January 8, 2022

Finally got the CDs yesterday that I sent to the printer hoping for a July 2021 release. Shipping outstanding orders tomorrow and opening negotiations with a distributor.