Continuing with CDs?

lol, cd91

"PACKED WITH WELL-KNOWN FAVOURITES – THE CHARLATANS, MANIC STREET PREACHERS, DODGY, SAINT ETIENNE, THE CRANBERRIES, NED’S ATOMIC DUSTBIN, NORTHSIDE, ETC – ALONGSIDE UNDERGROUND AND CULT INDEPENDENT HEROES – SULTANS OF PING FC, CHAPTERHOUSE, KINGMAKER, THE STAIRS, FLOWERED UP, LEVITATION AND MANY, MANY MORE."

kill me now

There were a lot of chicken littles warning in the 90's about the transient nature of compact discs, i.e. they were a cheap medium that would degrade over time (like, ten years time) to the point of being unlistenable. Music that was digitally recorded and manufactured would be lost forever! I'm guessing I'll be long gone when that happens to a vast majority of the CDs I have amassed.

xp If You Aren't Nauseous You Weren't There!

I've got just under 2,000 CDs that I'm now ready to part with. I'm streaming everything now, so I don't see the point in keeping them. Went to a record store owned by a friend, and he told me I'd probably get less than $1,000 for all of them. I was thinking about inviting a bunch of friends over and let them go for $1 or $2 apiece, but I'm not even sure if there would be any interest.

I sold off a large chunk of my CD collection over the years and nearly always the ones I most regret not hanging onto are boxed sets or compilations, the liner notes being a big part of it. I often feel like the time I started digging into older music (at some point in the 2000s) was a golden age for affordable comps and reissues, Soul Jazz and Strut as well as Numero Group.

(Various xposts, that wasn't meant as a counter to Jazzbo!)

You could always start a thread to sell them here for more? .50 each when purchased for $10 each would make me stubbornly keep them.

I have about the same amount now. After several purges over the decades, pretty solid on keeping what I have. I do need to get a cd player installed in my 2021 Jetta to play them.

I'll tell ya what sucks: new cars not coming with CD players. Often it was the only time to listen to archival stuff. I can't even hook up a portable player...unless someone has suggestions?

Koogs: yes, I have lots of those C88 etc tracks on vinyl and some of them even on mp3 from ... you! But the CDs are still good to have and good value I'd say.

Bluetooth transmitter? xp

I would take suggestions, too. Right now, I'm playing radio and a USB flash drive patched into the USB-C outlet playing .mp3s. I guess one VW bonus is the ambient highway noise makes the .mp3 audio sub-purity a non-issue.

There are a few YouTube videos out there (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0QschYV9Y8, one) I've looked at, though haven't bought yet.

I'm playing radio and a USB flash drive patched into the USB-C outlet playing .mp3s

me too

my car has Bluetooth, used for my phone.

Have you all bought the C86, C87, C88, C89 3CD compilations?

Got 'em all! Useful summaries of a time I just missed in terms of my reading/understanding of UK stuff before it really started kicking in more in 1990.

actually looking at the various 3cd psych compilations which contain about 70 things each that i know very little about. like this https://www.cherryred.co.uk/product/lets-go-down-blow-our-minds-the-british-psychedelic-sounds-of-1967/

Reviewed it!

https://thequietus.com/articles/21195-lets-go-down-and-blow-our-minds-the-british-psychedelic-sounds-of-1967-review

That whole series is pretty good, I stopped with '71, but it's most recently backtracked to '65.

Other Cherry Red series I've followed in recent years from them: the Close To the Noise Floor underground electronics/experimental comps from the 70s/early 80s, the Musik Music Musique early synthpop series, the proto-metal early 70s I'm A Freak, Baby comps.

My car is a 2009 model, so just old enough to have a dashboard 6CD changer which I never use, and an aux port that I plug my digital Walkman into.

Another thing Cherry Red's been good for lately are some really, really sharp single-artist boxes -- Tommy James and the Shondells, Steppenwolf (at unperson's recommendation!), and especially the Electric Prunes one, which for all the David Axelrod stuff alone is amazing. The two separate boxes of Raw Power-era Iggy and the Stooges, one live and one studio, do a great job of pulling together all these weird demi-bootlegs and Kris Needs's liners are crucial for making sense of it all.

Yeah, I've also bought single-artist Cherry Red boxes by Mudhoney (all their mid '90s albums), the Georgia Satellites, Sir Lord Baltimore, Toe Fat, and a massive Pentangle box from 2017 that has all their classic albums expanded as double CDs with a shit-ton of bonus tracks, live material, etc., etc. There's an Atomic Rooster set I've got my eye on, too.

Yeah, I picked up that Atomic Rooster one recently, it's good! Sounds like I need to investigate the Mudhoney one.

I also picked up a Toe Fat one, but I think it was from Esoteric, which is another good place for decent single artist boxes. I picked up their Fruup one during the pandemic.

bookmarkflaglink

I'm playing radio and a USB flash drive patched into the USB-C outlet playing .mp3s

me too

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, January 20, 2022 10:19 AM (one hour ago)

how about a 3.5mm to USB-C adapter if you already have a discman?

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61YDwa-YBHS._AC_SL1500_.jpg

oh wait, nevermind - most of these transmitters go the wrong way

I’m sweating when I trade this car in, if CD player no longer standard. It’s where I listen to CDs (and I don’t like sound quality of other options)

>> Reviewed it!

> Queens Park Rangers fan group’s football single

sold! (i can see the floodlights from the bedroom, walked past it every day before all this wfh thing)

There are a few YouTube videos out there (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0QschYV9Y8, one) I've looked at, though haven't bought yet.

Didn't really watchg it but $500? A bluetooth transmitter (plugged into a discman) with AptX is about $30. Not lossless but not too bad.

xp i can just get this out of the way for you—cars don’t come with cd players anymore

that shit sucks, man

When I go home, I usually end up riding in two kinds of cars - ones too new to have CD players, and one that's too old to have a CD player. Bluetooth for the former, old cassette adapter for the latter (but you need a headphone port on your device).

Will car stereo places still do the whole setup where they put a big disc changer in the trunk and wire it up to the front? Or did that disappear like 15 years ago and I have no idea because I'm not a driver?

I also picked up a Toe Fat one, but I think it was from Esoteric, which is another good place for decent single artist boxes. I picked up their Fruup one during the pandemic.

― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Thursday, 20 January 2022 16:20 (fifty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

AIUI Esoteric is an imprint of Cherry Red, not that it matters very much.

I really like their approach of having these boutiquey little sub-labels with their own character - for me El and Doctor Bird are consistently great and I can easily follow what they are up to without having to wade through the things I'm less interested in. I think El remains the idiosyncratic product of Mike Alway, as it has been these forty years or so.

Can't really see much call for multi-changers over just ripping to FLAC.

AIUI Esoteric is an imprint of Cherry Red, not that it matters very much.

Ha, had no idea, but makes sense!

xxp Don't new cars come with a line-in port? Just run a cable from your discman's output to the car's input.

but it's worth it for getting the booklets alone... esp CDs from the CD era, there's so much info and personality in the booklets that you can't find online. some of them basically qualify as historical literature

this is what was best about the Finder Keepers cds that i have picked up over the years.
the sleevenotes are always a great read and full of information as Andy Votel is a full nerd re such details.
was really pissed off when they stopped printing cd editions for their reissues (i guess for similar reasons to Numero).
i know i can buy the albums on bandcamp (not always though due to licencing issues i suspect), but it's just not the same experience.

for me El and Doctor Bird are consistently great and I can easily follow what they are up to without having to wade through the things I'm less interested in

Both great labels, and lately I've been diving into the Joe Gibbs collections the latter has been showcasing.

xp would need to buy a discman, though maybe that's a preferable overall route vs a Car Toys install.

Does that sound OK (line in)? And then you gotta power the Discman from the cigarette lighter (like it's 1998), and unplug/stash it every time you park... oy. I guess if it's the only reasonable option, and sounds better than Bluetooth...

Yeah, the CD revival is pretty bleeding-edge just now. Still tough to sell most titles for more than $1 (and often not even that). I have boxes and boxes of discs that I’m just putting away in the basement for another few years til it picks up proper steam. I’m the meantime I’m really enjoying hunting the bargain bins for obscure/weird/local stuff. Feels like crate digging for vinyl did 20 years ago. So easy to take a flyer on something you’ve never heard of that looks interesting. (Yeah, even easier with streaming, but the serendipity of discovery doesn’t have the same flavour with Spotify.)

I just want to complain about this - I bought a vinyl reissue yesterday that came with a CD copy of the album, but the disc was packaged sans case, just slid on the outside of the LP sleeve under the shrinkwrap, not even in a paper sleeve or anything, just the bare disc. WTF do they expect me to do with that? Never seen anything like it. The disc is scratched, of course, and I guess I've got to source my own case for it if I keep it. Theres no download included, so I wonder if the thought was to use the disc to rip a digital copy and then toss it? So weird.

There's another interesting CD player video from Techmoan today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag2RVk2vx4o

tangent xpost to one eye:
the next wave of bullshit is new vinyl pressings that come with neither cd nor download code. for those of us who don't have any way to archive vinyl to digital and would like to put it on a personal music player, purchasing the album twice is a necessity. kind of wish that the bandcamp standard of placing a digital copy of the album in your collection (to be downloaded from wherever however many times you like) would become the new standard and anything that doesn't do it that way would simply be laughed at.

it’d be good if download codes which come with vinyl could be plugged into bandcamp - fsck an mp3

it's honestly amazing that such a lossy, shitty format like mp3 is likely still the most common consumer digital music format - especially after all the progression we have made in disk space and associated technology since Y2K. there is simply no need for such compression at all anymore...

People would rather stream for pennies or get free digital files than pay for something that sounds better but is less convenient.

Although the "convenience over sound quality" argument was made by vinyl purists when CDs came of age but so...

People watch Netflix which is like wall to wall garbage but it’s convenient

The DVD service gave everyone the option of “watch a good movie in two days or watch crap now” and guess what they chose

Yeah, I dropped Netflix years ago for that reason. I end up watching a little bit every time I'm at someone else's place, but it's never anything I like, much less be willing to put on myself. Whenever they've financed films I'm interested in (The Irishman, Orson Welles's lost film, Mudbound, The Power of the Dog, Marriage Story, Cuaron's Roma, and a few others) I see it in the theaters anyway.

The discussion here about CDs is related to the discussion I see on the Spotify thread: musicians trying to take their music off Spotify.

I don't know the details of any of it, but it confirms the point that some of us don't want our music to be reliant on an external whim.

Yeah, I held on to my old Neil Young CD's. I also have the 24/192 Pono downloads, but I have to play those off a flash drive. The old CD's are underrated even if Neil hates them for being redbook digital - they were done well.

Also I never have to worry about my CD collection being tainted by Joe Rogan

I was going to say I'll never be able to watch NewsRadio with the same innocence, but I forgot about Hartman's murder. Man, life has really damaged that great show.

Eh, I still enjoy the heck out of it... (I can shove modern-day Rogan to the back of my head, it's not like he's the focus of the show)