Today is exactly 40th anniversary of CD in EU/US. Is that a reason to celebrate? How many have you collected? And how do you store your treasures?

[dougi]

They're thrown into a box somewhere. If I had to find them I think I could locate most of them within a week, max.

Same. Not touched since moving house 10 years ago.

 

[Keith_W]

Currently on a shelf in my listening room, but will be packed up and moved into boxes to free up space. All my CD's (about 3000) have been ripped into FLAC.

I still remember my dad bringing home our family's first CD player in the 80's. It was a substantial improvement over the cassette tapes I had been listening to. I was still too young to know much about audio but it was so clean, so clear, had no hiss, and most importantly - did not get stuck, and there is no tape to uncoil and wrap itself around the tape player. I did not like the form factor though, and I continued to listen to my Walkman which was much smaller and did not skip when moving.

How many of you remember how rubbish early car CD players were? If you went over a bump, it would skip.

My dad also bought a Laserdisc player. It did not get used much before DVD's started coming out.

 

[Adaboy4z]

I had the most CD's about 1998 about 300. They are in two of those big leather Flip Binders. All have been ripped to the disk drive in my car. I have a 6 or 7 disk that I listen to on the CD player regularly.

 

[UltraNearFieldJock]

Currently on a shelf in my listening room, but will be packed up and moved into boxes to free up space. All my CD's (about 3000) have been ripped into FLAC.

I still remember my dad bringing home our family's first CD player in the 80's. It was a substantial improvement over the cassette tapes I had been listening to. I was still too young to know much about audio but it was so clean, so clear, had no hiss, and most importantly - did not get stuck, and there is no tape to uncoil and wrap itself around the tape player. I did not like the form factor though, and I continued to listen to my Walkman which was much smaller and did not skip when moving.

How many of you remember how rubbish early car CD players were? If you went over a bump, it would skip.

My dad also bought a Laserdisc player. It did not get used much before DVD's started coming out.

A beautiful collection. It makes a really nice ambience for listening to music. It is also a good acoustic absorber/diffuser. It's a pity to dismantle it.

 

[Joe Smith]

About 1,500. Moved out of the living room storage unit a year ago, now in tubs in basement, alpha order by genre. I usually have about 25 new ones in active use, then do a "refiling" afternoon. Not the easiest system, but I'm not ready to let physical media go just yet...have about 1,800 records, 700 cassettes, and the CDs.

Got my first player and CDs in 1987 when we moved into our first house...a good memory. Onkyo DX-1400 player, which I still use, it's bulletproof. First 10 CDs were from one of those damn mail order record clubs...

 

[August West]

I have about 900 cd's. They were all ripped to flacs for listening. The cd's were removed from jewel cases and put into plastic sleeves (which can go into a cd "wallet"). Those are in plastic bins large enough for them to lay flat. There are 4 cd's per sheet.

 

[DVDdoug]

I think I have about 800 and I still buy them occasionally. My digital player software says I have over 1400 "albums" but some are digital downloads and some are downloads where I bought one song so I don't have the full album.

Unfortunately... When I first started ripping, I was ripping to MP3 for an iPod classic that docks in my vehicles. I'm still using that too... It still works and I don't have car (or car stereo) with Bluetooth... yet.

So when I get a new CD I rip it to MP3 and I'm too lazy to take-on the project of ripping them all to FLAC. I have ripped all of my DVDs losslessly (about 200 and about half of those are concert DVDs). I have a tower computer with a 4TB "media drive" and a couple of 4TB USB drives. And I just put a 4TB SSD in my laptop.

 

[UltraNearFieldJock]

Got my first player and CDs in 1987

II am a latecomer, 1991 with Sony X333ES. Here is my first stereo:

 

[pablolie]

...

Unfortunately... When I first started ripping, I was ripping to MP3 for an iPod classic that docks in my vehicles. I'm still using that too... It still works and I don't have car (or car stereo) with Bluetooth... yet.
...

Yeah, the original ripping decisions in 2005 or so throw long shadows, especially given my collection's size...

Back then FLAC was still an exotic format. Plus storage was still premium (I think I paid a crazy amount for my first 1TB drive). I decided on FLAC for classical and jazz (thank heavens!), but for popular (R&B, salsa) I did either 256k or 320k. Over time you wish you'd flac'd more of them, invariably.

 

[dorakeg]

Love the sound.

Hate the physical form factor.

Hate?? Why do you hate the form factor?? I absolutely love it (back then). Prior to the CDs, programs came in floppy disks.. I can still remember installing IBM OS2 using 27 1.44MB discs.... Lol... It's a real pita using them.

There was zip drives to save the world but it's still limited to 100MB and it's expensive!! It's also not that widely in use.

The first CDs could store around 600MB which is something like 400+ floppy disc... It changed the world. CD-recordables makes data transfer so much easier and cheaper. We could burn CDs and give them to others.

CDs revolutionalise the way we store and exchange data. It was a massive step forward.

 

[Hapo]

...just bought this...it's not like I can't stream it form Amazon Music Unlimited, but I don't like being complexly dependent upon the interwebs...

Amazon.com

 

[jhwalker]

My late husband and I were both big music lovers, and both of us collected CDs before we met and after. I now have around 7,000 ripped onto NAS and probably another 2,000 in boxes that have never been ripped. About the same number of DVDs / Blu-Rays, as well, and 200-300 LaserDiscs and a few hundred LPs.

Yeah, it takes up a lot of space :/ and I need to get rid of them. Since my husband passed away about this time last year, not really feeling the need to hold onto them anymore, but still loving and listening to the music every day.

 

[UltraNearFieldJock]

I now have around 7,000 ripped onto NAS and probably another 2,000 in boxes that have never been ripped. About the same number of DVDs / Blu-Rays, as well, and 200-300 LaserDiscs

So far, it's an absolute record. Is "the same number of DVDs / Blu-Rays" = 2000? It makes more than 11,000 pieces: Congrats!
You really need a lot of time to listen to this collection.

 

[Mr. Widget]

Boxes in my basement.

Ditto.

 

[Mr. Widget]

Follow up question.

Who can still play a CD and what equipment would you use if Rip Van Winkle shows up at the door with some CDs he would like to share?

 

[tmtomh]

I came of age with CDs - I was 14 in March 1983 and got my 1st CD player for my 16th birthday. I've always had a smallish collection, and it's grown very gradually from 300 15 years ago to about 500-550 these days - and I still play them. I store most of the collection in a couple of shallow Ikea Besta floor and wall units in my listening room, where they occupy a grand total of about 2 square feet of floorspace. My entire collection is ripped to FLAC and archived on backup drives, and about 80% of that is also loaded into my computer streaming library, which is how I listen to the music most of the time. But I enjoy playing the actual discs sometimes, and I enjoy being able to see them, check out the spines, open them up, and so on from time to time.

 

[UltraNearFieldJock]

Ditto.

What a thing! The best place for the treasures is now a dark and damp cellar !

 

[Owl]

I bought my first CD player in 1985 and haven't looked back. I do have a great turntable and phono stage, but rarely listen to anything except CD's. I remember thinking at the time how small the writing was in the liner notes compared to the sleeves in lp's. Now of course I need glasses to see anything.

 

[jhwalker]

So far, it's an absolute record. Is "the same number of DVDs / Blu-Rays" = 2000? It makes more than 11,000 pieces: Congrats!
You really need a lot of time to listen to this collection.

Sorry, I wasn't clear: another 7,000 or so DVDs / Blu-Rays.

So, yeah, around 17k total (CDs + DVDs / Blu-Rays + LPs + LaserDiscs).

 

[SIY]

I came of age with CDs - I was 14 in March 1983 and got my 1st CD player for my 16th birthday. I've always had a smallish collection, and it's grown very gradually from 300 15 years ago to about 500-550 these days - and I still play them. I store most of the collection in a couple of shallow Ikea Besta floor and wall units in my listening room, where they occupy a grand total of about 2 square feet of floorspace. My entire collection is ripped to FLAC and archived on backup drives, and about 80% of that is also loaded into my computer streaming library, which is how I listen to the music most of the time. But I enjoy playing the actual discs sometimes, and I enjoy being able to see them, check out the spines, open them up, and so on from time to time.

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Hmm, I do see two of my favorite albums featured...