What is the point of CD rips?

[Joe Smith]

I still have all of the 1,000+ albums I ripped over time in the iTunes/iPod era - mostly done at work while I was doing other tasks, or I never would have had the patience to do that. I only very rarely have a need to use those files, now that I am streaming. I like to use an alternate old phone as a DAP sometimes when we are travelling, so as not to drain my phone battery (or for airplanes when phone has antennas shut off), and sometimes I'll look at what I have stored on those devices and refresh it with some things from the old AAC library. That's about it. I think there's still value in ripping and having a music server per se for people with much music esoterica, very specific album versions, classical music interests, or those who want to listen to very high res/FLAC files only.

But...I still have all my CDs...those aren't going anywhere soon, as long as we have this big house.

 

[Mikig]

since I started using the various Roon TIDAL Qobuz I have turned on the CD player maybe three times.

I still have all my CDs but frankly I don't feel the need for them anymore. I only keep them because I'm fond of them. But I find everything I have equally on the various services. I tried to download some CDs onto the computer, but I don't find any use for it, if I want to listen to them I use the player.
Furthermore, since I have been using Roon radios I have finally discovered many new artists and I enjoy the new releases every day... I can't go on forever listening to the same CDs that I have kept for 30 years now... it had become boring .
The time for comparisons between CDs, streaming and vinyl is also over: what I wanted to understand, I understood for some time now.

The same goes for the turntable, I've given it up, I'm not interested in making any vinyl collection and for the price of one vinyl I pay for a month of the three streaming services I use, with millions of songs...

 

[MAB]

I can see this for older stuff, especially. Like I said, I'll keep comparing but a first, casual comparison of a handful of albums (mostly from 2000 onward) didn't convince me.

Post (What's my Story) Morning Glory?
The album that ruined high fidelity...
But seriously, by 2000 many CDs are brickwalled. It's called the Loudness War. While compression can be an interesting effect, using it to maximize the volume of a track at the expense of fidelity became common.
For instance, from Jean-François' comparison:

This is the effect. Please compare to reasonably master tracks of the same song in the review.
Nobody did this until late '90, then it became an epidemic.
Casual comparison of a handful of albums won't reveal the issue. Comparison of album version that is both well mastered to a brickwalled edition will reveal audible differences when level matched.

This isn't the only thing that degrades audio, it's not the biggest issue either but many albums these days are cranked up and suffer. I am really happy I ripped my collection even if it took me over a year. I do have multiple copies, since I was a music hoarder since the late '70s. Many CD's (and vinyl) I got at garage sales. The ripped copies are great comparison tools. If I do post the blind test of tracks it will be from my collection of ripped CDs.

 

[Barrelhouse Solly]

I have my CDs and vinyl on an NAS. Got rid of them all. I'm shopping around for a backup drive. Because I'm not adding to the music folder very often I have options on backup frequency.

 

[Timcognito]

When the streaming services consolidate, they will collude and start pricing by the song or buying complete label catalogs and only offer certain material. Just look at TV and movie streaming, one needs half a dozen services to get everything. I'm keeping my physical media and rips, and not just relying on a good internet connection when available in my rural location.

 

[Open Mind Audio]

I rip CDs because I'm a compulsive, obsessive music hoarder and completist who masochistically enjoys being tormented by the thought that my naming and tagging schema will not make sense to my heirs after I die, unless I get them just right. In other words, the normal reasons.

 

[Timcognito]

I rip CDs because I'm a compulsive, obsessive music hoarder and completist who masochistically enjoys being tormented by the thought that my naming and tagging schema will not make sense to my heirs after I die, unless I get them just right. In other words, the normal reasons.

I just rip and throw the Cd in the boxes with a thousand others and I'm happy to rediscover a treasured old nugget of music, which rarely happens when streaming.

 

[kemmler3D]

is there even a point in re-ripping my collection that I'm missing?

Streaming is only reliable until the record labels or streaming companies decide to stop offering a given album. There is no 100% alternative to owning your own copies of music (or any media.)

 

[MAB]

When the streaming services consolidate, they will collude and start pricing by the song or buying complete label catalogs and only offer certain material. Just look at TV and movie streaming, one needs half a dozen services to get everything. I'm keeping my physical media and rips, and not just relying on a good internet connection when available in my rural location.

Yeah. And many have already made costly investments that they will need to cover.

 

[MAB]

I rip CDs because I'm a compulsive, obsessive music hoarder and completist who masochistically enjoys being tormented by the thought that my naming and tagging schema will not make sense to my heirs after I die, unless I get them just right. In other words, the normal reasons.

Yes we are

 

[coonmanx]

Lost my entire rip collection a few weeks back. Not an enormous collection but probably about 200 CDs. The SD card they were stored on couldn't be rescued and I had no back-up.

Yeah.

Have been playing around with Tidal since then and so far, it seems to suit me just fine. Albums that I can't find on there are very few. Maybe 5% of my collection.

So, my question is: is there even a point in re-ripping my collection that I'm missing? I can't think of one. I mean apart from the few CDs I can't find on Tidal. And indeed, what is even the point of buying CDs at this point, again apart from the rare cases that aren't on Tidal and the like?

The point of buying CDs is so that you don't have to pay for a streaming service. You now own the music. And if I want to stream music, there are plenty of completely free internet radio stations that fo just that.

 

[Timcognito]

Streaming makes music a disposable guilty pleasure and musicians work as undervalued and physical media creates a sense of valued ownership and partnership with the artist and their work. I admit to the convenience of streaming and probably use it more than playing my old CDs but try to buy things that I routinely play to keep those guys in a job.

 

[coonmanx]

I have CD's just because I prefer it over streaming personally. The CD's mean I have no fear of content being removed and the like, plus physical media is just part of the Hi-fi experience in my mind.

Exactly. I go downstairs to make some food. Throw in a CD. Maybe even sit in the listening spot for a few songs. Very simple and easy. And I own that CD. No need for any streaming service.

 

[PuX]

Nothing gets my old man yells at cloud juices flowing like reading statements like that and realizing (ahem, feeling) that this is simply accepted as a given.
High resolution junk. That's what progress has brought us.

OK, gonna go yell at some young whippersnappers -- I am sure I can find some someplace!


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how is an old man thing if it is also factual and measurable?

take a few popular albums released in the 80s, compare against the remasters and it's obvious that the new versions are brickwalled or ruined. sure it may be still listenable and sure there may be exceptions, but this is very common.

and as for streaming, it is not progress except for convenience. most of the time we stream some low bitrate version, way worse than full bitrate of a CD, a technology that is 40 years old, let alone anything high res. no progress to be found.

 

[Philbo King]

Every streaming company has a finite lifespan. Locally stored (and backed up) data does not.

 

[radix]

Bit rot is an issue for all storage medium. It can affect hard drives too. It is hard to detect on regular file systems.

If you use a NAS to store your archive, some of them will have checksumed file systems and they can detect and correct bit rot. But it is important to store the data in multiple places.

I'd never trust an SD card for long-term storage. Some industrial SD cards are rated for 10 years w/o power, some specialized cards, I've heard, go for 20 years w/o power. But consumer cards are likely all over the place with and without power.

In regards to ripping, I'd either rip them or sell them. A ripped CD will play back better than a physical CD, because you can do multiple reads over sketchy parts of the surface and checksum the disc against public archives of checksums. Many of the ripping software out there has a zillion advanced ripping features. As bulk storage is so cheap nowadays, ripping in FLAC or other lossless format is not even a question.

 

[dtaylo1066]

I rip onto a WD My Cloud the CDs I have owned for decades. I have not purchased a CD in many years. I've been streaming my ripped CDs to a Tinker Board running Volumio. And any subsequent music I get from a streaming service or radio station.

I suppose there is some redundancy in that, but I did not have a streaming service at the time I ripped the CDs.

A failed storage drive is always a good reminder about backing up data. But we tend to blow that off, myself included.

 

[Zorlac]

I personally look for original mix/master versions of albums (aka first pressing releases). You will find the streaming services have all sorts of different releases...some of them are horrible in my opinion. I wish bands would release every version on streaming services, but people like myself that actually care about this are probably a fraction of 1%.

 

[radix]

For backup, I put my files on a Synology NAS, then use "Cloud Sync" to replicate up to a Dropbox folder (it can use many different replication targets). I let Dropbox worry about drive replication, rotation, checksumming, etc. The first replication takes a long time, but once it's sync'd the periodic updates are small.

I also have a 16TB HDD in the NAS for local backups so I have a better and more immediate history, and can use it for time machine, etc. But my off-site is Dropbox.

The best way to do backups is not to do them -- have the system do it automatically.

My GF is always struggling to use her external HDD to backup her laptop.

 

[terryforsythe]

Lost my entire rip collection a few weeks back. Not an enormous collection but probably about 200 CDs. The SD card they were stored on couldn't be rescued and I had no back-up.

Yeah.

Have been playing around with Tidal since then and so far, it seems to suit me just fine. Albums that I can't find on there are very few. Maybe 5% of my collection.

So, my question is: is there even a point in re-ripping my collection that I'm missing? I can't think of one. I mean apart from the few CDs I can't find on Tidal. And indeed, what is even the point of buying CDs at this point, again apart from the rare cases that aren't on Tidal and the like?

I have a couple of CDs that aren't on Tidal nor Spotify. Also, some of the original CDs sound better than the "re-masters", in my humble opinion. I found this to be more of an issue with Spotify than with Tidal, but I don’t know why. Are the re-masters the services are using different? I don't know.