Continuing with CDs?

Many xp's to UMS - my simple back up plan is a cheap DVD player with a coax out. I saw one for £20 in the supermarket before Christmas and was tempted to buy it so the back up was there.

There's a kind of archival/psychological comfort with FLACs that nothing's been lost and you can reconstruct a bit-for-bit perfect copy of the original .wavs ripped from the CD or even better if it came from a higher resolution transfer rather than a CD, but for my ears, yeah I can't tell the difference.

It would be cool to have a hybrid listening format (I think FLACs do support more multitracks) for stems though -- could selectively listen to just the bass track on and justice for all...

I am team FLAC for life, yes I can still hear the difference even though I am an old punk with tinnitus, and you can always convert back to WAV if you wanna burn a CDR for the car or a friend or something

I use Vox as my music player these days, so I just rip every new CD to FLAC and play through that

I thought FLAC’s was primarily about saving space. Like when I traded bootleg CD-R’s in the ‘00s, it was preferred for trees in order to fit multidisc sets into less discs - also to protect the data since it would have to be a CD-ROM and the data correction built into that format was more reliable than a music CD.

Also saves time for downloading music for those with slower connections.

But otherwise no advantage in terms of sound quality.

originally, yes, but you can also tag them and add images, which you can't do with WAV/AIFF

i.e. metadata sorry

FLACs aren't that much smaller than WAVs are they? like 10-20% smaller?

storage is pretty cheap nowadays, 2000 CDs at ~500 megabytes a FLAC rip is about 1 terabyte... you can get a >14TB hard drive for 2-300 bucks these days. that's like a billion CDs!

Depending on the setting and even the music, especially something like a spare spoken word recording, they can be a lot smaller. If it's a mono recording ripped from a CD, right off the bat you know you'll save at least half the data since it's two duplicate channels.

Actually 10-20 is more for zip compression. For FLAC, it can be as much as 70%: https://hbfs.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/looking-at-flac-compression-ratios/

> Someone should make a CD player that looks and acts like a regular CD player but in the background it rips every CD you play in it to FLAC, tags it, and stores it in an internal HD

https://blog.richersounds.com/product-review-bluesound-vault-2i-cd-ripper-and-network-streamer/

there used to be adverts in the papers for such a thing for years. this isn't it, but does the same job. from 2018...

https://luxe.digital/lifestyle/technology/brennan-b2-review/

this is the one from the adverts

I've not so scientifically noticed that ripping to FLAC seems to take way longer than just ripping to wav/aiff, which makes a lot of sense. The last "ripping project" I did I used FLAC and it took forever. Nowadays I only rip here and there, and just do it to aiff.

oh yeah I just rip them to WAV in itunes and then convert to Flac, much faster

I've been using a £30 DVD player into DAC for the last couple of years and it's fine sound-wise, but it takes a while to start actually playing a CD and there's no display (so no track number or time). I thought it wouldn't bother me but it's just annoying enough that I'll probably pick up a dedicated transport (refurb Cambridge Audio cxc seems to be about half price) or basic CD player separate at some point soon.

Maybe the right very cheap DVD player wouldn't have these issues but there are comfort pitfalls on it's-just-bits route.

what do read errors sound like? Is that just skipping?

So my player’s issue usually seems to start towards the middle of the disc, it will start making a faint skipping noise about once a second. If I stop the disc and restart the same track it will play fine. I contacted Yamaha and they said I should update the firmware, which requires downloading a file and putting it on a USB flash drive. So I guess that’s the next step in my adventure.

Fingers crossed, but seems like updating the firmware actually helped. Haven't had the skipping issue since I updated. Seems crazy they would ship a CD player with an issue like that, but I guess at least they can offer a DIY fix.

there's no display (so no track number or time). I thought it wouldn't bother me but it's just annoying enough that I'll probably pick up a dedicated transport (refurb Cambridge Audio cxc seems to be about half price) or basic CD player separate at some point soon.

this would seriously drive me insane

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiREEdjDX20

One solution for ripping a large number of CDs (or Blu-Rays) is to connect up 4-6 drives via USB and rip simultaneously. I use three at once for ripping Blu-Rays and my computer doesn't break a sweat. Mass FLAC conversion shouldn't be too taxing for a modern multicore/multithreaded CPU.

damn fancy

you can do it Duke! I am so happy that I did, now I can just keep up by ripping new-to-me items

Yeah what sleeve said. I did my massive initial rip back in the late 2000s at 320k mp3s and stayed with that standard for a while for anything new, but as I was able to upgrade my main hard drive over time it got to the point where I could switch to ALAC for both CD rips and Bandcamp downloads and did so, and have in bursts gone back to rerip things as available. Never hurts.

A couple of months ago I started using Soulseek for downloading files of stuff I have on vinyl. It’s been a dream, and it’s fast. Is there any reason to rip your own cds when Soulseek is faster?

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.