Continuing with CDs?

I know memes are the lowest form of art, but this made me laugh:

https://av-cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6nrz45lyato3e4obmzw5jez3/bafkreiacbzjwtd754wmq7jahomlbesz3654nkl5jqjja3mf7vzax2ye6qy@jpeg

Before all you hipsters throw out your cds, we have sold more cds in the past week than anytime in the past year, and more cds than vinyl for the first time in years! pic.twitter.com/G4ZXxlbPSm

— Simon Raymonde (@mrsimonraymonde) September 8, 2023

I like being able to buy like a dozen good secondhand CD's for the price of two brand-new vinyl records. If there was accurate and reliable data about secondhand sales, I'm sure CD sales numbers would be several times more than what's usually reported.

bought jewel cases from…. eugh… Acoustic Sounds because I needed some of those rounded corner SACD ones. The standard cases don’t close all the way and have different kinds of warps. One case back is so bowed that it won’t lay flat. Pretty sad for a company that caters to millionaires. I did pick up the SACD of Dylan’s desire for $20.

xxp lol i bought a vinyl of that anime recently. Kimagure Orange Road. Highest rec.

take me to Summer Side!

Okay, incoming rant here, but I'm increasingly annoyed by artists/labels who just really don't want you to have options to buy their music, or else erect so many barriers to make it not worth your while to try.

Example A - I read about this Philly band, Blues Ambush, who are putting out their S/T debut on Radical Documents, to be released this Friday from what I can see. It is only available on vinyl and the first pressing is sold out already, but there is apparently a second pressing of a whopping 20 copies according to the label's site (in all fairness, that second pressing seems to be currently available at this very moment). But the label recently killed their Bandcamp page, so no digital option anywhere to purchase and not even available to stream either. I get the challenges of physical copies and micro-sized pressings aren't rare at this point, but it seems extra boneheaded in 2023 to not offer a digital/streaming option at all.

Example B- unperson's great substack tipped me to a recent unearthing of an old Purple Trap (Keiji Haino, Bill Laswell, Rashied Ali) recording from 2005. It's digital only and this one IS available on Bandcamp... but only if you subscribe to Laswell's subscription only thing for $22 a month. I'm sure that's a value for some Laswell superfans, but I'm not paying $22 to access the one recording I'm interested in hearing. Seems like you could keep the subscription model going for the Laswell fans interested in the plethora of recordings he has up, and also offer a download option for those only interested in specific releases.

i know this is seriously bad, but ..
i have seen this re subscriber only releases.
what's to stop a bad'un from sub'ing for one month, downloading everything, and then cancelling the sub ?
i have never done it, but weirdly the thought did occur to me via the axiom/laswell thing ..

I suppose that's an option. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely get the appeal of subscriber only models and, to be very clear, I don't fault artists for trying to make a living in any way they see fit (which baffles me even more re: my Example A above) but one drawback seems to be that you are really limiting yourself to diehards only and aren't likely to expand your base much. To be fair, I know Laswell offers other stuff more openly on Bandcamp, but I guess I'm just annoyed about gatekeeping access to certain releases, as noble-intentioned as they may be.

what's to stop a bad'un from sub'ing for one month, downloading everything, and then cancelling the sub ?
i have never done it, but weirdly the thought did occur to me via the axiom/laswell thing ..

I subscribed to Laswell for about a year. I downloaded a bunch of things right away, but then I kept it going because he does keep adding to it month after month. In fact, I'm gonna re-subscribe for a few months because since I left he's unearthed three more Last Exit shows that I didn't even know existed, like they've never been bootlegged anywhere or anything.

I made another CD, for anyone continuing with CDs. Not many copies left. $3, all sales benefitting the Minnesota Ovarian Cancer Alliance in memory of Mimi Parker (whose "Laser Beam" I cover on the album).

The CDs of 'Evensong' are in and they came out great! $5 + shipping, 100% of sales go to the Minnesota Ovarian Cancer Alliance.https://t.co/E0AAlurNgS

For fans of Stars of the Lid, @lowtheband, KMRU, @infinitykniives, Haxan Cloak, Earth, Hillary Woods, Laurel Halo, Rachel's https://t.co/Dzt8nLPtkl pic.twitter.com/RXMbWeScGY

— Musicophilia - @musicophilia.bsky.social (@musicophiliamix) October 3, 2023

This looks cool but sadly shipping is 20x the CD cost.

argh, 10x.

Yeah, unfortunately shipping internationally has gone bonkers. The last CD I did, a couple folks actually ended up buying it in the UK and Canada and I think postage was literally something like $22 and $17 or so respectively--more than I'd charged based on what I could figure from USPS' cost charts.

Sad to say it in the "continuing with CDs" thread--but at least there's digital : / Sorry : (

It's worth it though. I bought the earlier CD just to be nice and it was really good. The kids like it too.

I bought like 25 or so CDs from the WFMU table at the record fair last weekend. I felt great about it! Such value, many hours of car listening. I got a lot of singer-songwriter stuff, country, some classicc rock faves, a lil bit of 90s free jazz & ethnographic stuff. CDs are great.

ian doo yoo doo the $5 folkways subscription thing? uh, digital. but just wondering. seems like a great deal for digital people.

I do not... I don't really stream anything. I listen to youtube at work cuz we have an account w/o ads. sometimes i listen to stuff i have purchased on bandcamp.

you see all the stuff you can get though?

i only listen to youtube myself. and i pay for premium. i don't download. or buy stuff online. but the folkways deal was tempting.

of course ned "too much is never enough" raggett hepped me to it.

despite being a millennial i am resistant to paying for things i do not actually get to own.
sometimes we listen to WFMU at work too - like this show of 45s from the jukebox at the Great Jones Cafe we are playing rn
https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/133011

you can listen to the vocalion playlist i made a while back. it's free!

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqITlO71C61yE3UW4WAf_96-dqfX_0Zsj

It's worth it though. I bought the earlier CD just to be nice and it was really good. The kids like it too.

― Cow_Art, Thursday, October 19, 2023 10:15 AM

Wow, very cool--glad you liked it! Have to admit, "the kids like it" is not something I'd ever have thought I'd hear about my music. They must be very calm kids haha!

The global shipping hikes that kicked in 2019 really blows. I recently bought a double-DVD set that's only distributed through a film museum in Austria, and while it's reasonably priced, the shipping charges more than doubled the cost to $50+. (The few American vendors who carry it charge accordingly, moreso to ensure a profit, likely because of import costs.)

Shipping is why I haven’t copped that three CD PJ Harvey bsides set yet

Fingers crossed it turns up in a record shop one of these days, but when shipping will cost more than the product itself …

https://www.walmart.com/ip/PJ-Harvey-B-Sides-Demos-Rarities-3-CD-CD/1560381469?from=/search

#freeshipping

😦

I noticed this on eBay too, but chalkys (the actual vendor in that Wal-mart listing) in the UK doesn't seem to have any massive shipping charges. Same with musicMagpie. Why is that? Do vendors like them have some kind of deal?

I just bought a CD from a UK seller on discogs, cause this particular compilation was the cheapest way to get a song I wanted. And at $11 with shipping, his was the cheapest copy for me (in the US). Seller then refunds me $2.50, cause after going to the post office it was even cheaper. CDs for me, CDs for you, CDs 4 life

have any ilxors catalogued their collection in some sort of database? i see that discogs has a barcode scanner, i might just do that. also, furniture racks/boxes suggestions?

i'm still contemplating a setup, too. i mostly listen on headphones, so having a small player with a good headphone amp inside would be ideal. drooling over this thing, but it's about 400 dollars outside of my budget. https://hifi-express.com/products/smsl-pl200?variant=44221400252660

I bought a barcode reader a few years ago with the intention of cataloguing all my CDs on Discogs and tbh I didn't end up using it much. It seemed to not scan a lot of discs, and a lot of different pressings of albums that have been reissued a thousand times have the same barcodes, so depending on how meticulous you want to get, you'll still find yourself trying to decipher matrix and mastering codes etched into the CD rims and stuff. I also have an unusual number of CDs without barcodes for some reason. I started just entering them manually and there was something meditative, even a little fun, about that

smartphone barcode apps have gotten much better if you want to go that route

I have an old DBF file that I use to update my CDs. Nothing more than the basic info and I started tracking year purchased in 2000.

My buddy went to the effort of scanning and determined exactly which pressing of all his LPs he owned. Way too much effort for me but I see the appeal.

It's especially appealing if you ever want to sell anything

Does any CD player actually sound better than another? I’ve been using an abandoned DVD player because I assumed it’s all 1s and 0s.

Upthread or on some other thread there was some talk of an audiophile goldrush on playstation 1s for having exceptional DAC, but if you have an optical out on your DVD player, you can outsource that part to a really good headphone amp or something.

Speakers and amp will have way more impact on sound than the DAC will. A CD player is really two things, a transport and a DAC... if the DVD player has digital audio out you can run that through a DAC of your choosing and then into the amp of your choosing to get (theoretically) better sound. But a DAC upgrade will not be a gamechanger for 99% of music lovers.

have any ilxors catalogued their collection in some sort of database? i see that discogs has a barcode scanner, i might just do that.

This is exactly what I did but I can't recall if I just scanned directly via my phone and the app! I might have done. A steady trawl of work for a couple of weeks but ever since then I just add to it. I figure it's handy not only for keeping track of what's around but -- knock on wood -- insurance purposes. You never know...

I did catalog all of my records into discogs, just trucking away at it nightly for like two weeks — I didn’t even know they had a scanner, although it wouldn’t have helped much with pre-80s LPs anyway. It certainly was not fun to do though.

Thought this was an interesting article:

https://darko.audio/2023/12/brits-bought-twice-as-many-cds-as-vinyl-lps-in-2023/?fbclid=IwAR3r6fm5xAi2B4ZSx6G-HJP13pIWnjC4zoeLWIi8NsrxBkzynKGf6_LPYx8

Although much of the article is spun about the continued dominance of vinyl, the CD numbers are interesting.

Vinyl’s comeback still resonates with readers of the mainstream press.

But what of CDs? This is where things get interesting:

From the BPI’s provisional report: “Additionally, the CD market has sustained its smallest annual decline in nearly a decade this year as it moves closer to plateauing. Nearly 11 million CDs, which remain important commercially and to Official Charts success, were sold across the year…”.

11 million CDs. 5.9 million vinyl LPs.

Now let us say the quiet part out loud: in the UK, CDs still outsell vinyl 2:1.

Does any CD player actually sound better than another? I’ve been using an abandoned DVD player because I assumed it’s all 1s and 0s.

playing devil's advocate: it's all 1s and 0s that have to be converted back to an analogue electric signal, theoretically some DACs could conceivably be audibly better than others.

in practice, though: no CD player is worse than any other unless the player's really substandard, bordering on defective.
worry about speakers and listening environment if you're looking for better quality; all dacs sound identical, all speakers/rooms sound different

f. hazel otm

also the ps1 thing was audiophile gibberish, as usual

A DAC doesn't just translate numbers into varying voltage, filtering etc is needed to eliminate ultrasonic crap which can and does affect subsequent analog stages, then there are preamps, etc. I've certainly had better CD players and worse ones. Can't tell you if it's the DACs, op-amps, power supplies or whatever, but the jump from entry-level to mid-fi is pretty satisfying. A few years back I switched to a dedicated DAC I could use with a Mac's optical out to play my entire collection from lossless files, haven't felt the need to tweak anything since. Sad to see my workhorse Rotel CD player sitting idle I guess.

^^ was gonna say, going to a Dragonfly DAC output for my Mac has made a noticeable difference for the better

Can't tell you if it's the DACs, op-amps, power supplies or whatever, but the jump from entry-level to mid-fi is pretty satisfying

that's what "bordering on defective" meant, a 30 quid audio player like the sandisk clip already had a transparent DAC and everything else (modulo the hiss problem in some hardware versions), and i'm sure plenty of audiophile grade equipment that sells for hundreds or thousands on promises of high fidelity measures (and perhaps even sounds) much worse than it

"getting a better player" will only get you anything if yours isn't already transparent to begin with and the replacement is an actual improvement.

Well no, I had a Marantz CD player that cost about $300, and upgraded to a Rotel that cost me about $700 used, and it was significantly better to my ears. Placebo, maybe? but I've never felt the need to upgrade in the 20 years since. There was nothing defective about the Marantz but the Rotel sounded immediately better, and stayed that way.
It's specious to insist that because it's a digital medium, all players are going to be transparent. It's not like you hook the data lines up to the RCA jacks, there are DACs, op-amps, filters etc. all made from parts whose quality and tolerances vary, and are made to a price point. Maybe all DACs are effectively transparent at some point in the development of the technology (not that the Sandisk device measures "transparent" in that review aside from flat frequency response, which disregards phase shift, distortion etc), but they're not the only thing in the box.

I remember reading that the accuracy of the clock plays a big part in the quality of the sound, as converting D to A requires very precise timing. And that $670 player posted above made a note about how accurate its clock is.

It's specious to insist that because it's a digital medium, all players are going to be transparent.
...
made from parts whose quality and tolerances vary, and are made to a price point

i'm not insisting that all digital players are transparent, only that transparency can be achieved cheaply and that price point has little to no correlation to quality, especially in the audiophoolery side of things. "you get what you pay for" won't get you far

all audible variance comes from the analogue side of the playback gear, the source being digital matters little because usually it's the circuitry *after* the DAC that matters, modern DACs can be both transparent and cheap, but as you well know that won't save you from impedance mismatches or power supply noise or what have you.

(also not sure which part of the clip+ measurements break transparency)

xp again, more audiophile FUD, jitter is pretty much a non-issue in digital audio, buffering exists

Buffering is for reading the digital data so that there is always data to process when needed, it has nothing to do with clock jitter, which affects the converting of the digital data to analog.

https://www.stereophile.com/reference/1290jitter/index.html

This article is simpler and has graphics showing the problem, but the author is a non-native English speaker, so it's a bit rougher to read.

https://headfonics.com/what-is-jitter-in-audio/