What is the point of CD rips?

[mhardy6647]

Are the re-masters the services are using different? I don't know.

You know what we need?
We need a way to Authenticate Master Quality.
Master Quality Authentication.
yup, that's what we need.

 

[Multicore]

The CD is the backup.

 

[radix]

The CD is the backup.

I thought a CD lifespan was 50-100 years. So, 1982 + 50 = 2032. I don't think that 50-100 year lifespan is gospel by any means. Is that the 1-sigma range, or the 3-sigma range? I'm sure someone knows the actual references for that.

The first generation of CDs is already rotting and dying - CDM Create Digital Music

CDs and other optical media don't last forever - then can even rot. But storage can help. Here's what archivists and research can teach us.

cdm.link

Some CD's started to deteriorate after 20-25 years.

https://www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/rt/CDservicelife_rev.pdf

The test population selected for this experiment was extremely diverse; representing discs constructed using different materials, from different manufacturers and record labels. Although the selected discs covered a relatively limited period of manufacture the wide distribution of life expectancies demonstrates the effect of these varied construction parameters on disc life. 10% of the discs failed at an estimated life of less than 25 years, including 6 discs (5%) that failed too early to obtain meaningful data or a meaningful lifetime estimate. 23 discs (16%) had insufficient increase in errors during the test, and thus, had infinite lifetimes, by the standards of the ISO test method. These results illustrate why it is so difficult to make broad generalizations about the lifetime of optical media.

 

[Overseas]

Just bought some new cds from the 80s and listening.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

A backup is pointless without a restoration test.

I've lived through terrible times where corporate PB backups could not be properly restored, despite the backups being regularly checked for integrity.

 

[tmtomh]

If you're happy with the sound quality, selection. and interface/experience of a music streaming service, then I don't see any need to re-rip your entire CD collection.

As noted above, though, even if you don't mind paying every month forever to listen to your music, there's still the possibility that some of your favorite music could disappear from the service without warning - and you'd still have to pay that monthly fee to keep listening to the rest of your music. So if you already own some of your very favorite music on CD, it's probably worth gradually re-ripping that core part of your collection when you get the time now and then.

Personally I don't enjoy the idea of renting my music. Movies and TV shows I'm fine with streaming, because I watch most of those only once, and if I watch them a 2nd (or 3rd) time, it's usually so rare, and so many years later, that it's worth the convenience of not keeping discs and a player, or large files and a server and a backup - I'm fine paying a few bucks to re-rent a movie I saw 5 years ago.

When it comes to music, though, I listen to that pretty much every day, and a lot of my favorite music has 2 - or 3, or 8 - measurably different masterings available, and I almost always have 1 or 2 masterings that are my go-to, and I want to have access to those specific masterings regardless of whether they're the current/easily available ones you might find on a streaming service.

That said, for day-to-day listening I do prefer listening from my locally stored computer music server to putting in physical discs. The server has both my CD rips and the digital files/downloads I've accumulated over the years, and it's so much quicker and easier to go from song to song or album to album. But it's all locally stored music, not streaming.

To each their own, of course.

 

[mhardy6647]

NAS makes a handy way to listen to one's own music, I must say.
(OK, not "must", but work with me here )
Even so, there's enough inertia (and time consumed) when it comes to booting the computer, running the player s/w (bundled with the NAS) and picking out something from a list of titles on the NAS -- compared to turning on a CDP, pushing the 'open' button*, dropping in a CD, and pressing play -- that I still prefer the latter (yelling at clouds again, I am).

... and I am just plain not crazy about playlists. I am way too streaming consciousness**^ to care for preprogramming, so to speak.

__________________
* actually, pushing the open tray button on the Denon DVDP I use as a 'transport' turns it on automagically.
** or, as I prefer to call it, screaming consciousness
^ and as if y'all couldn't tell.

 

[radix]

NAS makes a handy way to listen to one's own music, I must say.
(OK, not "must", but work with me here )
Even so, there's enough inertia (and time consumed) when it comes to booting the computer, running the player s/w (bundled with the NAS) and picking out something from a list of titles on the NAS -- compared to turning on a CDP, pushing the 'open' button*, dropping in a CD, and pressing play -- that I still prefer the latter (yelling at clouds again, I am).

... and I am just plain not crazy about playlists. I am way too streaming consciousness**^ to care for preprogramming, so to speak.

__________________
* actually, pushing the open tray button on the Denon DVDP I use as a 'transport' turns it on automagically.
** or, as I prefer to call it, screaming consciousness
^ and as if y'all couldn't tell.

I do at times prefer physical media. But I usually go for the lp vs cd, 95%+ is streamed however.

 

[mhardy6647]

There are... a lot... of LPs here. I like the notion of playing records, but the inertia to play an LP tends to thwart me even more than streaming does (vs. spinning a CD). Playing a CD is lowest-common-denominator hifi, I'd opine.
I am even not a particularly obsessive record spinner (in terms of precleaning rituals and general fastidiousness), although using an arm with no cueing does require a certain Zen-like approach to the act of (in particular) starting play.

 

[dualazmak]

Backup digital files is really important/critical issue. In my post here, I wrote as follows.
I am living in the land of typhoon, earthquake and tsunami; of course I always keep multiple backups, therefore, of my entire digital library in several SSDs (within PCs and also in portable USB 3.0 SSDs), HDDs and NAS at my home and also in remote at my daughter's home and son's (300 km and 100 km away!). Of course, I periodically update the backups in my home at least once in a month and update the remote (daughter's and son's) backups at least once in 6 months through high-speed optical internet connections.

I essentially do not like, do not fully trust, any of the cloud storage services especially for my large digital music library; I daily use Dropbox, however, for my daily business and for occasional "music sharing", but even with my Dropbox contents I always keep local and remote backups (in off-Dropbax folders) in SSDs, HDDs and NAS.

Fortunately my current iron-frame house is on a little hill with solid ground (free from flood), but almost no way to avoid possible mega earthquake (once in 600 years?) which might happen any place in Japan...

As for "policy and practice" of my digital music library (ripped CDs, digitized LPs, downloaded tracks, etc.), please refer to my post here.

 

[recycle]

I thought a CD lifespan was 50-100 years. So, 1982 + 50 = 2032. I don't think that 50-100 year lifespan is gospel by any means. Is that the 1-sigma range, or the 3-sigma range? I'm sure someone knows the actual references for that.

The first generation of CDs is already rotting and dying - CDM Create Digital Music

CDs and other optical media don't last forever - then can even rot. But storage can help. Here's what archivists and research can teach us.

cdm.link

Some CD's started to deteriorate after 20-25 years.

https://www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/rt/CDservicelife_rev.pdf

Yes, CDs have an expiration date: I guess it depends on the quality of the support, the burning method, how they have been stored over the years, etc... Most of my burned audio CD's from the 90's give me reading error now, various of the original ones too, luckily I have them all now on flac. Considering that HDD's fails too, the only way to keep your music alive is a constant backup over the years

 

[Philbo King]

Yes, CDs have an expiration date: I guess it depends on the quality of the support, the burning method, how they have been stored over the years, etc... Most of my burned audio CD's from the 90's give me reading error now, various of the original ones too, luckily I have them all now on flac. Considering that HDD's fails too, the only way to keep your music alive is a constant backup over the years

Burned CDs (made with a PC CD drive) are not the same as glass-master replicated CDs (like you get when you buy a music CD).

Burned ones relied on photosensitive dyes which have been known to degrade with time.

What Is CD Duplication And How Duplication Works

What is CD duplication and how duplication works. Pricing, formats and more. Find out if CD duplication is the right fit for you and your CD release.

www.cdunity.com

 

[Timcognito]

I started collecting music and playback gear way back when there was only LPs, maybe 6-700. When CDs came out I got one those carousel players, 400 Cds. Then I got second one and had all paper inserts in a flip book. After Tower Records and Music Warehouse went down, fire selling everything including collections, it was behind time to get a third. Well luckily the music world had evolved to the NAS and Roon showed up, because I was ass deep in media, we are talking thousands. No such thing as streaming just sharing and that was illegal back in the day of Napster. Thing about ripping is that your prized collection that you bought and gave royalties to artists is on display in one place for the first time. If you don't have to think about what music you willing to plunk down some real coin for, priorities and tradeoffs and never really becoming a collector, its understandable to think ripping is weird. Just music appreciator of that inexpensive commodity, its how us old guys used to think about radio, free music wherever you go. I have to believe just like my first telephone free for $12/month that prices for streaming will skyrocket as competition lessens, and music companies start having their own streaming services for their catalogs. Hope I'm wrong on that last part.

 

[Digby]

Considering that HDD's fails too, the only way to keep your music alive is a constant backup over the years

I give you...drum roll please...vinyl (and shellac) records! A hundred and twenty years of service in some cases, which hard drives/CDs can (or will) say that for themselves?

 

[tmtomh]

NAS makes a handy way to listen to one's own music, I must say.
(OK, not "must", but work with me here )
Even so, there's enough inertia (and time consumed) when it comes to booting the computer, running the player s/w (bundled with the NAS) and picking out something from a list of titles on the NAS -- compared to turning on a CDP, pushing the 'open' button*, dropping in a CD, and pressing play -- that I still prefer the latter (yelling at clouds again, I am).

... and I am just plain not crazy about playlists. I am way too streaming consciousness**^ to care for preprogramming, so to speak.

__________________
* actually, pushing the open tray button on the Denon DVDP I use as a 'transport' turns it on automagically.
** or, as I prefer to call it, screaming consciousness
^ and as if y'all couldn't tell.

I agree with you about that ease-of-use point you make. In my particular case, I have a Mac mini running the Apple Music app, and it's connected directly (well, via an SMSL PO100 just to do the digital USB-to-coax conversion) to the digital input of my Genelec active speakers. I keep the mini on 24/7 with the Music app running, and I have the mini set up to auto-start the Music app on startup for whenever I have to restart the computer (software updates, power outages, and so on). So in my case I press the On button on the Genelec remote, then go into my iPhone and call up the Remote app, and with one tap on my Library icon I'm in the music library. From pressing the first button to hearing sound is about 10 seconds.

In the past, when I had passive speakers and separates, and I accessed the mini via a laptop (via screen sharing) then the procedure to start up, select, and play music from my computer streamer was a little less simple and quick, and playing CDs was something I did more often for exactly the reason you state.

I should also say that your reasoning is why I use the mini as a directly-connected music server and only use its network connection for remote-controlling the playback interface. I find that makes things simpler and faster than using an NAS.

 

[tmtomh]

Burned CDs (made with a PC CD drive) are not the same as glass-master replicated CDs (like you get when you buy a music CD).

Burned ones relied on photosensitive dyes which have been known to degrade with time.

What Is CD Duplication And How Duplication Works

What is CD duplication and how duplication works. Pricing, formats and more. Find out if CD duplication is the right fit for you and your CD release.

www.cdunity.com

Indeed. Burned CDs are a dreadful backup solution from a long-term data security/integrity standpoint. There are very cool burnable DVDs and Blu Ray discs called M-Discs that use an inorganic layer instead of organic dye, and those suckers are practically indestructible. They're so robust that to my knowledge they don't even have a clear polycarbonate layer over the data side to protect it - because they don't need it and scratches to the poly would be more of a data-retrieval risk than damage to those discs' data layer is.

 

[Bruce Morgen]

Buying used CDs and ripping them to lossless files is my way. My elderly HP tower doubles as my music server -- the files take up most of a physically separate 2TB hard drive that's periodically backed up to my 12TB external drive. It's bad enough that my loved ones insist on multiple streaming subscriptions for TV and movies -- there's no way I'm going pay a monthly ransom for streaming music of dubious SQ when I already own the CDs!

 

[Lambda]

"You'll own nothing and be happy"

Some just prefer to buy instead of rent

 

[Zgrado1970]

A good reason to rip (or re-rip), for me, is gapless playback - I have lots of ripped albums with combined tracks that I listen to instead of a version of that album from a streaming service. There is no “microgap” between tracks when listening to complete albums on streaming, and when those albums are in playlists on shuffle, tracks that I want to hear together (i.e. “You Really Got Me” absolutely must follow “Eruption” (Van Halen, 1978)) are played together.

 

[recycle]

Burned CDs (made with a PC CD drive) are not the same as glass-master replicated CDs (like you get when you buy a music CD).

Burned ones relied on photosensitive dyes which have been known to degrade with time.

What Is CD Duplication And How Duplication Works

What is CD duplication and how duplication works. Pricing, formats and more. Find out if CD duplication is the right fit for you and your CD release.

www.cdunity.com

Absolutely, in fact almost all my burned CDs ended in the trashbin. It must be said that even original CDs suffer from daily mistreatment: just imagine the collection you left in the car for weeks: scratches, high temperatures, moisture… I remember that in the early days, marketing proposed CD format as bulletproof and claims them to be indestructible over time, pointing out the difference with vinyl. Unfortunately things went differently