Feel free to move on to another topic, as this idea crossed my mind just now.
CD's are being sold since 1982, so I'd like to take this as the 'starting point' of the (Audio) Compact Disc.
Now, that's actually thirty years ago. Most of us probably didn't notice this. Anyway, since audio CD's are actually pretty old, and there is alternative recording technology around by now, are CD's actually retro yet?
You know, I was thinking about setting up a retro sound system, and my first though was acquiring a record turntable / radio combo from the 70's. I was talking this over with a friend who has a Grundig turntable / radio combo, where the turntable was actually manufactured by Dual. It is made in 1972 or so. Now we were talking about my idea, and we agreed I should add a tape deck, since reel to reel would be probably too expensive. Now, the next idea was a full size MiniDisc player, and - well a Compact Disc player, since they are actually older than MiniDisc.
Even though CD's kinda "feel" modern, they're actually pretty old-school by now. Using CD's in those stand-alone players from the early 1990's is almost as retro as using audio tapes or Vinyl records, I think.
I'd like to have your thoughts on this...
EDIT:
The CD player in my car can read audio CD's and CDROM's, but it seems to be very picky about the CDROM's. I usually end up burning audio CD's for my car. This was actually what brought all that up, since my friend mentioned to me, that he still uses tapes in his car.
I understand Sony CDP-101's and Philips CD100's are selling for pretty good money these days...
When I bought my new receiver a few years ago, I got a standard audio CD player with it; not because I'd use it as a standard means of delivering audio to my ears, but because I might have the occasional redbook CD to playtest, and doing that in my CDROM player is suboptimal due to noise and loading sluggishness.
After that I'd rip the CD. The CD player is mostly a dustcover for the receiver below it.
Would a CDP101 sell for more if you have the original software bundle (two CDs in the US) to include? ;-)
Ooo, you mean like when Nintendo bundled Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt with the original NES?
Yes, CDs are quickly becoming "retro" for me - and I grew up with them!
I'm 35, and I remember well getting my first boombox that could play CDs (a Panasonic with a full logic tape deck! Yeah, baby!)...it was right around 1990.
Up until that point, it had been my mighty Sony Walkman with Mega Bass! for playback, and a couple different boomboxes and dual cassette decks for making mix tapes (which are now "cool retro").
I loved CDs right from the start - instant track access! no rewinding! no dropouts! no wow and flutter! no noise! no Dolby (and lack thereof on most portable/car cassette decks)!!
But these days...yeah, all I can think about is how inefficient they are, both as a storage medium for digital data (only 80 minutes/700 MB on something that big?), and as very non-biodegradable/recyclable plastic objects.
I do sort of miss the label art on the CDs themselves, flipping through my CD wallets and being able to instantly identify albums by the front of the CD (I much prefer PDF booklets to liner notes, OTOH), but cranking up the album art size in iTunes to the largest size provides much of the same experience.
In short - while I buy lossless downloads whenever I can, I would indeed never buy another CD if Apple started offering all their tracks as ALAC downloads (16/44, please - bandwidth ain't free).
Ooo, you mean like when Nintendo bundled Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt with the original NES?
Yes. http://www.stereophile.com/cdplayers/193/ (http://www.stereophile.com/cdplayers/193/) , top paragraph
I do sort of miss the label art on the CDs themselves, flipping through my CD wallets and being able to instantly identify albums by the front of the CD
Hey, what about LP? Not 300 x 300 square pixels -- no, 300 mm x 300 mm in (sorta) photographic quality! Those were the days ...
The Technics 5 disc changer in my system (12 years old and still plays flawlessly) still gets used. I've ripped all my discs to FLAC on hard drives, but I'm still a sucker for the physical product.
I am still waiting for my boombox to break as it is only a tape player (allbeit with dual tapes for "high speed syncro recording")! Then I can get digital audio in the bedroom w/o using my portable mp3 player (which itself is 10+ years old) and does not have a colour screen let alone a touch screen.
However yesterday I got my iPod nano v1 replacement from Apple and they shipped a new 8Gb touch screen version so I am happy!
However as for CDs, as soon as I got a PC in the 90s I ripped my collection to VBR mp3 on (MusicCenterJukebox?) and played via WinAmp.
Yes. http://www.stereophile.com/cdplayers/193/ (http://www.stereophile.com/cdplayers/193/) , top paragraph
Wow (http://www.stereophile.com/content/sony-cdp-101-compact-disc-player-jgh-responds-part-3) - "it is my personal opinion (and not necessarily the magazine's) that the CD will wipe out the LP in less than five years as the preferred medium for audio perfectionists". In Stereophile. You've got to give them credit for putting all this up on the website. Next to a 2012 advert for a turntable (no adverts for CD players in sight!).
Cheers,
David.
Although I'm thirty-eight, I didn't really buy my first CD player until I was 16 or so. I always had a boombox, Walkman, shitty K-Mart all-in-one stereo, and cassettes up to that point. (I owned a few records but was a bit too simple-minded to just buy the LPs and make cassette copies like most of my friends did.)
Sometime in the late nineties/early 2000s I got interested in MiniDiscs and owned many stand-alone Sony and Kenwood stereo components. I also had a MD player in my car for quite a while.
It wasn't until sometime after 2006 that I actually owned my first personal computer. Up to this point I actually believed that MDs were bit-identical copies of the CD when I copied them via fibre-optic wire. I didn't even know what ATRAC was or anything about lossy codecs.
I now have a dedicated CD/DVD-A/SACD player for my home stereo. The price was right. I own 3 DVD-As and 0 SACDs, but the ability is there to play them should I wish to. I just bought a new Pro-Ject turntable so one of these days I'm going to get around to doing some "Hi-res" 24 bit vinyl transfers, burn them to DVD5s, and sit back and pretend I hear the difference
I don't feel that any of my components are "retro." They all serve a purpose. I would never go back to cassettes...I loathe them and they are one of the few things I do NOT miss about the eighties. MD is pointless now but I could see having a player if I still had stuff I copied that I don't have on another format. Music to me is timeless and most of the formats in use today are capable of decent fidelity IMO.
Yes. http://www.stereophile.com/cdplayers/193/ (http://www.stereophile.com/cdplayers/193/) , top paragraph
Wow (http://www.stereophile.com/content/sony-cdp-101-compact-disc-player-jgh-responds-part-3) - "it is my personal opinion (and not necessarily the magazine's) that the CD will wipe out the LP in less than five years as the preferred medium for audio perfectionists". In Stereophile. You've got to give them credit for putting all this up on the website. Next to a 2012 advert for a turntable (no adverts for CD players in sight!).
Cheers,
David.
Before I even clicked on the link, I knew it was J. Gordon Holt.
The apples have continued to fall further and further from the tree...
[…] In short - while I buy lossless downloads whenever I can, I would indeed never buy another CD if Apple started offering all their tracks as ALAC downloads (16/44, please - bandwidth ain't free).
I’d agree, if the download (1) included digital liner-notes and (2) were by someone other than Apple.
Op here.
I was just talking to someone from mplayer, if and when they'd fix the problem with CD-DA playback.
mplayer uses libcdparanoia, which makes the CD stop playing every 30 seconds or so, for about 10 seconds.
Now, I was told, that I should rip the CDs and not listen to them directly. "CDs are something from the past", and this feature is to see no improvement for quite some time.
Then I downloaded the mplayer2 sources and compiled it against libcdio and it works really well with CD playback by now. Unfortunatelly, mplayer2 can't read CD-Text, but maybe I can convince people to implement CD-Text display.
It seems there are some people, that like to phase out CDs altogether.
Have you ever actually seen a CD with CD-Text? The only ones that I ever saw were ones that I made myself.
Have you ever actually seen a CD with CD-Text?
Yes, a few. But the text was all in capitals, so on a PC you might as well grab it from freedb or whatever for consistency with every other disc you use.
There's a version of CD-Text that copes with lower case letters, and I've burnt CDs with this myself, but never seen a commercially released CD with this.
CDs are retro because mainstream chart "single" releases can often been found for download only these days - i.e. no CD version available.
Not only retro, but a high watermark in terms of quality - given that most downloads are still lossy, and the "higher quality" SACD and DVD-A were never mainstream.
Another indicator: some have already gone through the "junk" status, and are beginning to rise in price.
I reckon near-mint CD prices will continue to rise over the years - because they'll be enough OCD collectors out there who want the "original", don't trust someone else to rip it, and want one in great condition. You may think this is ridiculous, given that you can make a perfect lossless copy at no cost - but remember: there was a time when CDs came in that people thought keeping vinyl records was ridiculous, and sending complete collections to the dump - yet mint first pressing of any half-decent vinyl album remain highly collectable - some are ridiculously valuable.
Cheers,
David.
there was a time when CDs came in that people thought keeping vinyl records was ridiculous, and sending complete collections to the dump - yet mint first pressing of any half-decent vinyl album remain highly collectable - some are ridiculously valuable.
I believe the collectability value in Vinyls comes with the fact, that the more you play them, the more they will degrade. So an often played vinyl is arguably less in value that a seldom played one.
Now, since CDs are a digital medium, the original cannot be distinguished from the copy (if done correctly), since a 1 is a 1 and a 0, a 0. So no matter how often you play a CD, it will always be the same quality. Two vinyls aren't even exactly the same, even when pressed on the same machine from the same master.
And yes, burned CDs will degrade, but that's different. Original, pressed CDs should last for ages.
I've always been a fan of magnetic tape for backup storage and archiving computer data, but never actually for Hi-Fi music. Yeah, Reel-to-Reel looks cool and all, but it just never had me that interested, compared to other means of storing data. OK, the only tape based system, that I'd like to play around with, is DAT. It's the only tape system that makes sense, imo.
So there we are, I've grown up with CDs and it seems, lived to a time, where this medium dies out. Something that was though of as lasting forever.
I guess I'll get myself a nice old CD player and start setting up the retro stereo!
So no matter how often you play a CD, it will always be the same quality.
Unless they were played at one of my student parties in the 80's/90's...
For the collector, condition is everything, whether it affects the functioning of the object, or not.
A random example of a CD I bought for £2 years ago (when it was considered junk*)...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000LYDHNC (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000LYDHNC)
* - it may well still be considered junk , but £16-£40 seems a lot!
Cheers,
David.
Have you ever actually seen a CD with CD-Text? The only ones that I ever saw were ones that I made myself.
I've actually seen a lot of CD-Text within the last couple years, especially from the Sony-owned labels.
As a predominantly classical listener, CD's still rule the roost.
Classical D/Ls are useless, very rarely being complete, and do not get me started on Linn and the HD nonsense!
Some amazing classical bargains on Amazon, EMI boxsets for peanuts!
PS, I do rip them to a PC and play them using a Squeezebox, the convenience is just addictive!
Some amazing classical bargains on Amazon, EMI boxsets for peanuts!
Yes, absolutely stunning what's available.
PS, I do rip them to a PC and play them using a Squeezebox, the convenience is just addictive!
Yup, in combination with iPeng on an iPad it's unbeatable. Can't recall when I last listened to a CD on a CD player.
My CDs leave their casing immediately after having been ripped and are stored in comfortable sleeves in metal CD carry-cases where they -- hopefully -- rest forever.