Anyone else coming back to CDs?

[617]

I've been trying to find some Latin Jazz music which isn't on any online service, so I've been shopping around for CDs for the first time in a while. Recently, I purchased 5 albums by an artist I really like for under 20 dollars. Some copies were taken out of circulation from libraries, some from record stores.

Obviously I rip them with EAC and keep the media as a backup. I find I'm really enjoying this way of consuming music - I like the simplicity, very high audio quality and low expense. Looking at my spotify usage, I find that I basically listen to a small library of albums, although occasionally I use it to find new music.

Anyone else going back to CDs? I used Tidal for a while but the library wasn't perfect, and the MQA situation didn't help either.

 

[MediumRare]

CDs from the library are great. My library sisters with 26 others, so I can get almost any CD I look for. What you do with the CDs you borrow is your own decision.

 

[oivavoi]

Yap. I figured out that when streaming I only get distracted by things online. Trying to go back to mainly CDs these days. Much easier to focus on the music that way, I think! In the future I might go CDs only, who knows.

 

[Robin L]

Rip CDs to my computer/DAP. Someday I'll stream music. But today is not that day. Amazing how many good CDs can be found for $1 or less.

 

[Rja4000]

No yet. Not completely.
And certainly not to the actual physical plastic thing (Never again !)
But Ripped on a NAS or downloaded, why not.

 

[pozz]

There is a lot of music on CD and vinyl that hasn't been uploaded to streaming services. So I have a mix of both at home.

Edit: And cassette tapes. For the hissssssss.

 

[Rja4000]

And quite a few that were available on streaming and disappeared.

 

[Frank Dernie]

I was an early adopter of file based music, which was all ripped CDs since I travelled abroad every week and it was the easiest lightest way of taking my music with me.
The only problem was that the early tagging strategy was for pop music, so the principle file header was "artist" and tracks were called songs, ffs.
This was fine for some of my music but useless for classical with rips ending up with tracks all over the place and the easy way of filing what I actually wanted to listen to in the correct order was using playlists organised to be easy to find, "Bruckner 7", for example.
As I ripped more discs it got very unwieldy without re-tagging every rip to make the system file the tracks so I could quickly find them and play in the right order, monumental pita.
Streaming suffers from the same problem but worse since I haven't built the playlist as I rip, so very irritating to find what I want and listen to it. Amazon is as bad. Since I have bought literally thousands of CDs from them I get recommended mail shots daily. For classical release boxed sets any attempt to sample listen is stymied by the fact that their site doesn't list the composer (just the "artist" as usual) so I may be presented with "movement 1 Scherzo, von Karjan/ Berlin Philharmonic" which is as much use as a chocolate tea pot.
So I did go back to CDs about 10 years ago, and play the odd LP too if the music I want to hear next happens to be on one.
I still use files and streaming for sometimes for any pop genre since it works fine for them.

 

[Neddy]

Funny, but I just spent most of the morning sorting through many years of CDs parked on my 'zon wish list, then streamed to 'zonMusicHD in order to sort into 'buy CD now, Cheap', 'keep as streamed', 'wait for better price', or 'not sure, park' categories!
While amazon may not be the cheapest used CD source, it IS convenient, and dropping recommendations/discoveries on their wish list is a good way to keep track of 'em...but now I can play (most) of them for free if I want.
Nice...and ended spending less than $50 on a bunch of CDs, and NOT spending another $100 or so that I'm fine with being only on their cloud.
And, yes, some CDs were not available, including some that I already have, so the best of the best I purchase and then rip...and just put away.
There are several used book/CD outlets near by, but so far I've resisted that temptation.
Sure beats dropping $50 a week on LPs without really knowing if they were any good or not - like I did in the 70s
Agree for sure on the tagging mess.
In theory it's something I can do while listening, but the priorities tend to swap to 'tag first, then listen', which is even more annoying.
Oh well, great music has never been better, or cheaper, or more findable/available.

 

[captain paranoia]

This was fine for some of my music but useless for classical with rips ending up with tracks all over the place

Not sure which ripping tool you used, but every one I've used has allowed me to specify how the tracks are saved, and where, by using a file naming template based on the various metadata fields. Online metadata is quite a new thing in my ripping process; for many years I entered it all by hand, using the AlbumArtist and Album tags (that I entered in the ripping tool) to rip to a folder that echoed the physical CD library, and, whilst it ripped, I typed in the names of the tracks into a text file. When I'd finished a ripping session, I ran a script that used the track list file to create a script to rename the ripped tracks, for each of the newly ripped albums. I then imported the tracks into a media library, and used 'infer metadata from filename' to add the track # and title metadata.

 

[captain paranoia]

As for CDs, I've never stopped buying them (and haven't yet started streaming), although I haven't bought one new in years; mine are from charity shops, and recently from MusicMagpie (2 for £3 delivered). Prices range from 20p to £3 (if I find something I really want). I picked up a six CD compilation for £1 the other day; all in perfect condition. Last week was a big binge; 18 from MM, 10 from Oxfam and 9 from other charity shops. All now ripped and tagged.

 

[617]

How do you rip them? I use EAC and an external CD drive and I find it takes about 20-30 minutes to rip the CD. I'm using the most accurate EAC settings but that's still quite a while.

 

[Julf]

Still occasionally buy CDs, but only if not available as (lossless) downloads. Any CD I get gets ripped straight away.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Not sure which ripping tool you used, but every one I've used has allowed me to specify how the tracks are saved, and where, by using a file naming template based on the various metadata fields. Online metadata is quite a new thing in my ripping process; for many years I entered it all by hand, using the AlbumArtist and Album tags (that I entered in the ripping tool) to rip to a folder that echoed the physical CD library, and, whilst it ripped, I typed in the names of the tracks into a text file. When I'd finished a ripping session, I ran a script that used the track list file to create a script to rename the ripped tracks, for each of the newly ripped albums. I then imported the tracks into a media library, and used 'infer metadata from filename' to add the track # and title metadata.

Yep, I could do all that but it is a royal pita and as an old bloke with CDs filed I am not going to waste any more of my life on that sort of dross when it takes me 30secs at most to walk to the CD shelves, pick out the disc and put it in the player and sit down again, which doesn't irritate me at all, plus I don't need a computer to do it.
I write this as somebody who started writing software in 1970 and stopped bored in 1986.

I do use qobuz to listen to music and either buy the file (rarely) or CD (usually) of anything I like.

 

[captain paranoia]

I use EAC and an external CD drive and I find it takes about 20-30 minutes to rip the CD.

I've used EAC for the last ten years, and some dubious rippers before that. I use an internal drive in my mini tower. Previously IDE, now SATA. Always capable of 40+ x speed. I usually achieve an average rip speed of 25x. If a CD has trouble ripping, I try another all-in-one PC with a cheap, slimline DVD/CD drive that rips slower, and often manages a perfect rip where the faster drive fails.

You do have to tune EAC to get the fastest rip out of the drive; let it examine the drive characteristics (one of its menu options), and tell it the fastest speed to rip at. When I got my current mini tower, the rip speed was only 3x. Here's the record in my 'fiddling with toys' logfile:

• trying to get to the bottom of the slow CD rip (~ 3x)
• updated IDE ATA/ATAPI controller driver
  • AMD 1.2.1.337 31/03/13
  • no improvement
• ran EAC drive options setup
  • detected drive no cache, accurateStream & C2 options
  • slightly faster ~ 6x
• enabled background compression tasks (otherwise rips, compresses serially)
• selected 40x drive speed option
  • now flying!
  • individual track up to 35x
  • album up to 25x

 

[dinglehoser]

I've been trying to find some Latin Jazz music which isn't on any online service, so I've been shopping around for CDs for the first time in a while. Recently, I purchased 5 albums by an artist I really like for under 20 dollars. Some copies were taken out of circulation from libraries, some from record stores.

Obviously I rip them with EAC and keep the media as a backup. I find I'm really enjoying this way of consuming music - I like the simplicity, very high audio quality and low expense. Looking at my spotify usage, I find that I basically listen to a small library of albums, although occasionally I use it to find new music.

Anyone else going back to CDs? I used Tidal for a while but the library wasn't perfect, and the MQA situation didn't help either.

Like others here (and like you), I do an amalgam of everything (including the occasional side of vinyl). I buy CDs, typically second hand, but immediately rip them and put the media into storage. I use Roon as my front end, so the line between Tidal and my own library of FLACs is effectively invisible (and it saves me from Tidal's joke of a UI). Makes it way easier to happen upon new music, too. I'd say about Roon accounts for 95% of my listening, split evenly between CD rips in my own library and Tidal streams.

I'll typically buy LPs of records I really, really like, mostly because I like the tactility of the ritual.

 

[617]

I've used EAC for the last ten years, and some dubious rippers before that. I use an internal drive in my mini tower. Previously IDE, now SATA. Always capable of 40+ x speed. I usually achieve an average rip speed of 25x. If a CD has trouble ripping, I try another all-in-one PC with a cheap, slimline DVD/CD drive that rips slower, and often manages a perfect rip where the faster drive fails.

You do have to tune EAC to get the fastest rip out of the drive; let it examine the drive characteristics (one of its menu options), and tell it the fastest speed to rip at. When I got my current mini tower, the rip speed was only 3x. Here's the record in my 'fiddling with toys' logfile:

• trying to get to the bottom of the slow CD rip (~ 3x)
• updated IDE ATA/ATAPI controller driver
  • AMD 1.2.1.337 31/03/13
  • no improvement
• ran EAC drive options setup
  • detected drive no cache, accurateStream & C2 options
  • slightly faster ~ 6x
• enabled background compression tasks (otherwise rips, compresses serially)
• selected 40x drive speed option
  • now flying!
  • individual track up to 35x
  • album up to 25x

Thanks, I'll try changing some of those settings. Very helpful.

 

[Fluffy]

I bet that you're from the generation that grew up with physical media (records, cassettes, CD). So for you this is 'returning' to CD. The current generation has no concept of physical media, neither for music or film. For them (or maybe I should say for us, cause I'm there too), CDs are at best retro-cool – but most of the time it's just old-fashioned and awkward.

As for music that exists only in CD and not on streaming, you can probably say the same things on music that was never transferred from records to CDs. In the evolution from one format/technology to another, not everything is preserved. And also, there is plenty of music that can only be found on the internet as a file on a server of a streaming service, that have no physical object associated with it. The youngest generation of emerging musicians solely exists online – that's where they make, market and sell their music.

I'm not saying CDs are bad. Every format should be judged by its own merits. But today CDs are as obsolete as were cassette tapes and VHS tapes a decade ago. And it's not piracy that killed it, it's the ability to have constant access to millions of CDs instantaneously, for a monthly fee that could buy you maybe a couple of them just a few years ago.

 

[DonH56]

I never left them. And they still are missing many of the records I used to have, and good luck finding half the CDs and SACDs folk recommend that are more than a few years old. I finally got some "remastered" old rock CDs of bands I used to know and was thoroughly let down by most of them. Apparently the loudness wars are still going strong. Blah. I've turned into my crotchety old grandfather, just want to listen to my music again.

 

[sergeauckland]

I still buy probably 80% of my music on CD, the rest on LP with the very occasional download from Linn or Chandos. I then rip the CDs using EAC for playing on my Squeezebox, as I like the convenience, and it's also used for listening to the radio.

With used CDs now costing a few pounds, it's a great time to be buying physical media for as long as they're available.

S