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Topic: Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore? (Read 25796 times) previous topic - next topic
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Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #50 –
Hi Sound-Of-Muzak, I don't listen to CDs any more. All my hardware supports USB sticks or has flash memory. The situation has never been as convenient as today. I only buy lossless music; I prefer www downloads over buying physical CDs - just for one simple reason: no time for ripping and scanning, I'm happy if the service has been already done. I'm basically into classical, as an example, chandos.co.uk offers lossless + pdf booklets (old booklets as scans, new booklets as PDFs from a Quarkxpress source). With a printer driver, I btw convert the PDFs to jpegs in order to display the booklet in Foobar2000 (foo_uie_albumart).
I'm very relaxed about lossless codec choice on target devices. I tend to use fast encoders at a VBR level, which has some extra extra "artifacts security margin". gogo @ V2 for car and Cowon mp3 player, Vorbis (Lancer) at q8 for my living room. Maybe a waste of space, but this is not a problem. Audio Codecs are the least of our problems. Except is you are a typical 87 year old deaf audiophile with a Tinnitus. Then of course Vinyl is the only way to truth.

I have a nice chrome looking USB stick for my car radio now (nice in car = small and no LED) - "Super Talent pico 4gb"- The 8gb are said to be broken btw, at least I'd read Amazon reviews first...

Only in my car, browsing through the albums (=folders) is annoying, because it does only display Numbers and typically you have a lot of stuff on todays storage media. The older Sony's display numbers. The new ones have "quick Browzer", which works perfectly. Ultra quick hierarchical browsing and display of folder names, my wife has such a device, it is relaxing.

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #51 –
Quote from: Sound-of-Muzak on
I can see myself doing this.  Problem is, I don't have my library encoded to FLAC because I was originally worried about space.  Anyone know how many GB's approximately 170 CDs will take up on my HDD.  I have 58GB free on my HDD and don't really want to buy an external drive if I don't have to (on a laptop).

Even if the flacs will fit on your laptop, I'd suggest you still get an external. You really don't want your internal drive to be almost full.  Performance will eventually suffer and you'll end up hunting down stuff to delete to free up space. You can pick up an external for less than $100, rip all your lossless to that, and keep transparent lossy files on your laptop. (Use abx to find a transparent lossy.).

Pm me if you're interested in the guide I wrote detailing how to go about it.

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #52 –
Quote from: Sound-of-Muzak on
Quote from: Anas on
I use my CDs only to look at them (nicely shelved, alphabetically... yummy!) and to read the booklet from time to time, whilst listening to my FLAC rips.
Apart from that I will sometimes borrow a disc to a friend to introduce him to a new band. Usually my CDs leave their case only once to have them ripped, though.
I don't even have a CD player and I wouldn't buy one, for the sole reason that I don't want to stand up and change discs every time I wish to listen to a different album.
The downside is that I have to turn on my PC everytime I want to listen to music, even if I'm not using it for something else.


I can see myself doing this.  Problem is, I don't have my library encoded to FLAC because I was originally worried about space.  Anyone know how many GB's approximately 170 CDs will take up on my HDD.  I have 58GB free on my HDD and don't really want to buy an external drive if I don't have to (on a laptop).


Well I just use an external 1TB Hdd which I got for $100 odd, and that's enough for about anybody's music

But well I fully understand your initial post. While I totally love the convenience of computer playback, I find that the computer can be a distraction sometimes. For the chill out listening sessions, I really love to switch off my monitor, and take out those CDs and and put them one by one into the CD player, and enjoy as I flip through the CD inserts.

Different experience altogether. Either way, enjoy your music

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #53 –
Total Size : 466GB (500 453 290 755 bytes)
Duration : 7wk 6d 3:03:57.296 (210049944732 samples)
Avg. Bitrate : 841 kbps

My FLAC stats.

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #54 –
TAK here. Canar, switch to classical, this would save some space  550 kbps av. / Music goes from Baroque till Late romantics. My small lossless IDM collection (15hrs) has 750 kbps av. I'd guess Heavy Metalists would have around 900 k.

Quote from: gerwen on
Even if the flacs will fit on your laptop, I'd suggest you still get an external. You really don't want your internal drive to be almost full.  Performance will eventually suffer and you'll end up hunting down stuff to delete to free up space.

If the Laptop is the playback device and fan noise is an issue, it's also a good idea to use an external drive because of heat generation...

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #55 –
Quote from: peanuts on
Well I just use an external 1TB Hdd which I got for $100 odd, and that's enough for about anybody's music


What is the best option for keeping all that lossless backed up?  Do you keep two drives? 

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #56 –
Me: One additional backup drive inside the Computer for regular backups, one backup drive stored outhouse and changed annually. +Truecrypt. I really don't want to loose all stuff at once with just one single HD crash.

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #57 –
Quote from: Squeller on
I'd guess Heavy Metalists would have around 900 k.

Avg. Bitrate: 990kbps. Good guess Squeller 

Quote from: Frumious B on
What is the best option for keeping all that lossless backed up?  Do you keep two drives?

I'm using an external drive as well. Concerning backups, I advise you not to trust you luck too much. I backup my music to my internal drive and my important files to my external one and hope that both do not fail simultanously. You'll become a bit anxious when you once had a drive that died.

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #58 –
My FLAC storage: Original CDs + Server copy (hardware RAID5) + external HDD. Average bitrate 881kbps.

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #59 –
I generally only buy music on CDs, unless they're free online  (I mean by legitimate means of course)
The last time I listened to any amount of CDs was when one of my HDDs got bad blocks and I needed to scan it, try low level formatting, copy partitions etc. (all outside of Windows) - I realized the downside of large HDDs is that it takes ages to do surface scans etc., nearly 3 hours on my 750GB! Fortunately I have backups and didn't lose any significant data, and the HDD was still under warranty.

Sometimes I listen to CDs just after I buy them and haven't got around to ripping them yet, but besides that and my PC being out of action they don't see much use.

My car only has a tape player, so I just use an adaptor for my MP3 player (iAudio 7). Considering I got a CD player when I was 12, my tape collection is embarrassing to say the least.

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #60 –
Quote from: kornchild2002 on
iPods don't assume anything, the end users do.  iTunes is compatible with multiple album covers so you could effectively assign the album cover, back cover, and liner notes all to one file.  iTunes Store purchases are even come with the front cover, liners, and back cover in a PDF file.


Point taken. However, assigning multiple album art to a single file is not the problem. Viewing it on an ipod is. How do you view multiple album art on an ipod? AFAIK you can't. It always displays the first album art image embedded in the file and there doesn't seem to be a way to view the rest. Hopefully, this will be rectified in the next generation of ipods.

Another ipod grievance is that AFAIK ipods seem to grab the album art from only the first file and ignores the rest.  This is an issue if you want to use the single artwork for compilations (e.g. greatest hits, various artist)  instead of an often meaningless and totally rubbish image (e.g. "Greatest Hits of the 70's" type of compilation with album art that induces nausea: who wants classic tracks associated visually with that?!). This may be a niche issue that will never be rectified, or it could be a setting I just am ignorant of!

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #61 –
Squeezebox is the ultimate in convenience for me, and when you can get great sound quality as well - I don't see much reason to keep the CDs around. I threw away the jewel cases maybe two years ago, and the last time I moved (maybe a year ago) I threw away the actual CDs as well.


Thorbjorn

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #62 –
IMO Throwing away the original CD's is crazy!

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #63 –
Yeah, it's pretty much as bad as throwing books away. You could have at least sold them or donated them to a library.

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #64 –
That's where I draw the line, I wouldn't throw away any CDs. But maybe I'm just too materialistic.

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #65 –
Every generation hoards what it shouldn't and probably throws away far more than it should. Look at how many utterly crappy Time-Life record collections grace used record stores (typically with Dynagroove applied, ick). But then look at how much music is completely OOP nowadays, how libraries seem to be paring down their music collections. And going back further, how very rare it is to see a good Edison cylinder or Berliner disc from the 19th century - an utterly disposable commodity format turned out to be thrown away so much that there is hardly any record of it left!

I was talking with my wife last night about space around the house and getting rid of stuff, and pointed out that there's a fairly low bar for getting rid of a lot of my vinyl - I record them to the computer anyway and hardly touch them after that, and a lot of them I don't even listen to on the PC that often, I bought most of them for a buck a piece, etc. She was the one who passionately persuaded me to hold on to them at almost all costs. Records can be handed down to others. Having a full reportory collection is cool. Records can be conversed over and loaned to others. A lot of the records are OOP and may not be available at all via CD/online. And, of course, having the physical medium is extremely important for those of us without good multi-terabyte backup solutions. But most importantly, I lose some emotional attachment to music when I do not own it physically. Forking over that cash really does wonders inside my head for appreciating music. I kinda wonder if, recalling all those stories about people selling their vinyl and buying CDs and feeling disappointed, it was not due to any loss of quality in the new format, but more simply due to them having to part with the original physical product. It's kind of a bummer to do that. All of those arguments were made about vinyl but they almost entirely apply to CD too.

Back on topic: CDs haven't been my primary listening source since 2000; it alternated between MP3, Vorbis, AAC and MPC after that before settling on FLAC. I still listen to CDs in the car when I don't have an iPod hookup or haven't ripped them yet. But at this point it really doesn't matter. I've always listened to music in front of a computer; it's natural for me and I can listen critically that way; while I have no reason to purchase CDs on fidelity/subjective grounds I have every reason to buy them on non-quality grounds.

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #66 –
Only in my car, and only if I'm lazy enough not to rip it for my radio's SD card reader.

My computer is hooked to my stereo, and for me it's all digital now. I don't even have an external CD Player anymore. It's not worth the hassle, imo. Whenever I buy a new CD I just rip it, browse through the booklet and forget about it, unless I want to read the lyrics.

Heck, even my 60 year old mom won't bother with CDs anymore since I bought her an MP3 player. She just hooks the thing to her amp and asks me to load some new music to it from time to time. And she has a 200+ CD classical collection! Her Marantz CD player has been gathering dust for 2 years now.

So at least in my home CDs are pretty much dead, and I couldn't care less!

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #67 –
I spent a fortune getting special bookshelves made with compartments for my 600 odd CDs and now use an Apple TV and stream from various Apple Computers. I occasionally import another I want to hear, but I'd happily throw the lot away were it not for the gaps they'd leave. I junked vinyl in the late eighties. I like everything a computer can do so would never go back.
Ash

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #68 –
I keep my CDs.  I have a whole drawer in my desk of just CDs.  Probably a waste of time, but I nothing but to use that space for.

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #69 –
I've been buying lots of used cds and as soon as I get them, I rip to FLAC and from there I convert to MP3 @ V3. No need to touch the cds again.

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #70 –
.... stored CDs are a lossless backup (until they degrade....).

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #71 –
Quote from: Nick.C on
.... stored CDs are a lossless backup (until they degrade....).

Original, stamped CDs generally don't degrade with time, as far as I'm aware. However, to avoid any wear and tear, I often burn a copy if I want to use a CD in my car, for instance.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  ;~)

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #72 –
Quote from: Sound-of-Muzak on
Yeah, it's pretty much as bad as throwing books away. You could have at least sold them or donated them to a library.


Books is also useless to have around if you don't read them anymore, and yes I gave the stuff away (as I've done with both books and furnitures as well) - the point is that there is no need to have stuff around that you don't use, that includes CDs.

I live in a small apartment in the middle of Oslo with limited storage space, so I can't collect stuff I don't need
Thorbjorn

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #73 –
Quote from: 2tec on
stamped CDs generally don't degrade with time

Mine do 
audiophile // flac & wavpack, mostly // using too many audio players
 

Anyone here listen to their CDs anymore?

Reply #74 –
Quote from: hybris on
Quote from: Sound-of-Muzak on
Yeah, it's pretty much as bad as throwing books away. You could have at least sold them or donated them to a library.


Books is also useless to have around if you don't read them anymore, and yes I gave the stuff away (as I've done with both books and furnitures as well) - the point is that there is no need to have stuff around that you don't use, that includes CDs.

I live in a small apartment in the middle of Oslo with limited storage space, so I can't collect stuff I don't need


I'd agree with the uselessness of having something around that you don't use or need. I objected on principle, the idea of throwing away what others could use, and donating to a library or giving them away is much better than throwing them in the trash.