Ditch the CD transport and go with computer?

[Daverz]

CD is still a cheap way to collect music, and tons of music on CD has never been available for download and probably never will be. But these days I just rip everything as soon as I get it, so I do need to keep a CDROM drive around. The only risks are the occasional screw-ups by the seller or the post office.

 

[Asylum Seeker]

CDs can bit-rot.

 

[Daverz]

CDs can bit-rot.

Apart from bronzing, which was a different issue, I've never encountered a "bit rotted" CD. And the bronzed ones were a handful out of thousands of CDs. I have many CDs that are more than 30 years old and play/rip fine.

 

[Asylum Seeker]

Apart from bronzing, which was a different issue, I've never encountered a "bit rotted" CD. And the bronzed ones were a handful out of thousands of CDs. I have many CDs that are more than 30 years old and play/rip fine.

I have. I've lost a handful of CDs to bit-rot.

 

[murraycamp]

I have. I've lost a handful of CDs to bit-rot.

What is bit-rot?

 

[Asylum Seeker]

What is bit-rot?

Chemical corrosion/degradation of the CD surface which prevents the CD reader device from reading the CD info accurately or at all.

 

[Doodski]

What is bit-rot?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot

 

[Daverz]

Apart from bronzing, which was a different issue, I've never encountered a "bit rotted" CD. I have many CDs that are more than 30 years old and play/rip fine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot

They do include bronzing in their definition of "bit rot". This was a mottled, brown discoloration around the outer edge of CDs (an overall champagne color is fine). This affected CDs from one source (PDO). Among my own CDs, the affected labels were Unicorn, ASV, and Hyperion. Hyperion actually replaced one of my CDs on request. Again, this was a handful of CDs among thousands.

Audiophiles like to make fun of the "perfect sound forever" slogan, but CDs actually came closer than any other format to actually making good on that promise.

(No, I am not going back to using a CD player. )

 

[murraycamp]

So it's really plastic-rot.

 

[GD Fan]

CD is still a cheap way to collect music, and tons of music on CD has never been available for download and probably never will be. But these days I just rip everything as soon as I get it, so I do need to keep a CDROM drive around. The only risks are the occasional screw-ups by the seller or the post office.

This thread clearly demonstrates there are two established camps on this topic. I find myself not quite halfway between, with two huge bookcases heaping with CDs dominating my front room, flanking my stereo setup and occupying precious real estate in my Manhattan apartment. And I even took delivery of and installed a new Arcam CD player this month (and love it).

But I also have a large and growing collection of FLAC files and even more lousy mp3s since Amazon introduced Autorip. Today I signed up for a Tidal subscription based on the tip posted here that they're running a $5 promo rate.

I love tangible CDs, and I love liner notes even more. And as the poster above pointed out tons of great music isn't available on the streaming services. As I gorge on New Orleans music here in Mardi Gras season I'm forced to my stacks of physical CDs.

So the answer in my opinion? Sell that old Sony to some sucker willing to pay through the nose for a dying technology, buy a far cheaper stand-in, and rip the collection to FLAC format.

 

[oldandintheway]

I am about to rip my modest several hundred CD collection to get everything in one place. Is FLAC what I want? What are the sound and library management considerations? I know I want lossless, but storage is cheap. The choices appear to be WAV, FLAC or APPLE Lossless (iTunes is on my PC). I think one of the British firms (Naim?) insists on WAV. Does the music management program in use effect this decision? I don't know anything about "tags". Thanks.

 

[GD Fan]

I am about to rip my modest several hundred CD collection to get everything in one place. Is FLAC what I want? What are the sound and library management considerations? I know I want lossless, but storage is cheap. The choices appear to be WAV, FLAC or APPLE Lossless (iTunes is on my PC). I think one of the British firms (Naim?) insists on WAV. Does the music management program in use effect this decision? I don't know anything about "tags". Thanks.

Great handle.

FLAC has been the recent standard for uncompressed rips, but others might have a more contemporaneous view. The tags make a big difference for sorting, organization, and convenience but are mostly done if you use, or outsource to someone using, the proper software.

 

[digicidal]

As long as it's a lossless format, nothing else really matters fidelity-wise. Despite not likely being able to hear the difference with very high rate lossy... it's important that the archive rips are lossless - so you can transcode to whatever your devices might like down the road with the mimimum losses allowed in the destination format and bitrate.

Whether you rip to FLAC, ALAC (Apple Lossless), WMA Lossless (there are several, only one is lossless however), or ??? is immaterial. Just use something like dBpoweramp converter and you can make transcodes for phones or cars that might not have compatibility with your chosen format... but most everything that can play a digital file these days will handle FLAC natively and most will also do ALAC and WMA as well.

I use dBpoweramp for ripping as well... they do nice metadata (with a few issues on rare recordings) handling lookups for album artwork, song titles, genre, etc. All rips are also able to be indvidually verified to source at ripping and also checked via PerfectMeta against everyone else who has ripped the same title - so double checking essentially.

 

[Asylum Seeker]

I am about to rip my modest several hundred CD collection to get everything in one place. Is FLAC what I want? What are the sound and library management considerations? I know I want lossless, but storage is cheap. The choices appear to be WAV, FLAC or APPLE Lossless (iTunes is on my PC). I think one of the British firms (Naim?) insists on WAV. Does the music management program in use effect this decision? I don't know anything about "tags". Thanks.

Good luck storing your collection in WAV on a microSD, which is what you want for it you plan to reproduce/play on a mobile device. I've got my entire CD collection in lossless FLAC and ALAC in a container half the volume of a US penny.

Once again, no one is forcing you to take the mobile device out of the home, and nothing prevents you from using a mobile device in the home. Think of 'mobile' in the sense of mobility inside and around the home.

 

[tw99]

Use of WAV instead of FLAC is just more audiophile nonsense. FLAC or ALAC are the correct choices for ripping a CD collection...

 

[Sal1950]

Besides streaming, I still buy a lot of discs for the music I love and then rip it. Don't want do depend 100% on the internet connection for my music.
Also a large percentage of the discs are SACD, DVD-A, BluRay, and what have you, for multich sources. They are still ripped but I hang on to them, most are escalating in value rapidly.

 

[Frank Dernie]

I was an early adopter of file based music since I was on planes/in hotels every week and carrying a walkman and cassettes then CD player and CDs was bulky and heavy.
I pre-ordered the first iPod as soon as I heard about it, it was exactly what I needed.
The bad side was that since Steve Jobs only thought about pop music the original, and pretty well standardised, ripping format is all about "artist" and "songs" whereas I listen 90% of the time to classical music and neither of those tags are particularly useful for finding what I want, make it worse even, but playlists with a simple title made things easy to find instead (at first, the newer software is less convenient).
So I have almost all my old LPs, thousands of CDs, a big library of ripped music for travel, some SACDs and a subscription to Qobuz.
When I retired 10 years ago I mainly went back to listening to either CD or LP.
I find new music on Qobuz but usually buy a CD of what I like a lot, or sometimes a download.
So whatever the advice of all the members here, some of whom seem to think only they know best, my advice is to find what suits you, since clearly there is a big variance in what suits everybody else.
I know I can't hear any SQ difference between 24/96 and 16/44 so the issue of better than 16-bit linearity is moot.
Nobody is making kit as good as what you already have so if you think you like, or may go back to, CD I would keep it.

 

[Asylum Seeker]

2010 was when I switched, using an iPod 6th gen.

 

[usersky]

I get that it's a lovely piece of engineering, but the OP seemed more motivated by value. I doubt there's a whole new generation of CD player enthusiasts coming along to push prices up even further. So he needs to sell it to some old guy while they are still around

Well there a new generation of vinyl lovers, what's so improbable of a similar thing about CDs?

 

[Tks]

Well there a new generation of vinyl lovers, what's so improbable of a similar thing about CDs?

Hardware. It's not the most difficult thing in the world for a company even like Schiit to make their own turntable somehow. But making your own CD players/drives? Not really unless OEM's for them keep existing.