Why are people still buying CD players?

[j_garcia]

I was being facetious because I know it doesn't really matter the delivery method. Good rip of a quality source to another quality audio format and it should be indistinguishable.

I don't really see the point of a $3500 player either, and never did.

 

[Hobbit]

A couple of reasons to still buy or play CD's are:

There is still music out there that can hard, if not impossible, to find soft copies of to download. Split Enz True Colours comes to mind. Quite a bit of older jazz I can find soft versions of songs but not the entire album.

I have some DTS and Dolby CD's that sound great played this way.

If I'm listening to live music I like and they're selling CD's I'll pick one up to listen to and help support them. I remember buying Motley Crue's first album on cassette off the record stores counter when they were still playing clubs in the LA area.

Having said that, most my music has been ripped and most new music I buy is downloaded. Portable hard drives are cheep to use for backup. All my systems are networked so I can get to my collection anywhere in the house.

I guess another poll could be do you download songs or albums?

 

[Jeepers]

But mostly I just don't understand the need for really really high end CD players. If one has that much money, it seems ripping and serving them up would be much better way to spend the money.

You can ask that about everything. Why spending 100,000 USD on a car when you can buy one for 20,000 USD.

 

[its phillip]

I prefer to buy cds but I do rip them to flac. I just convert them to v2 mp3 for the car

 

[zieglj01]

It is easier for me to play CDs - however, I do not need a CD player >>
I use my Bluray player to play them - and that saves me from having to
deal with people, wanting to sell me an over-hyped $3000 CD player.

I also stream music from Amazon music and iTunes - plus even download
them to a USB flashdrive stick, to play in the car - plus, I also have a CD
player in the car.

When I want to, and prefer to do serious music listening - I play the CDs.

 

[ImcLoud]

I like cd's sometimes, i don't know why they sould just as good as the stuff on the ipad but sometimes I wanna throw a cd in the player and listen through... I can't tell the difference in sq, but some say they can, as far as a dac, I have used the muse $40 units and a few $1000 ish units, I dont hear a difference in them either... I have audioengine d1's and xda2's they all sound good...

 

[Lulimet]

I still buy CDs but I never play them. I no longer own a CD player. I rip them to 4 different formats and resell the CD on eBay to recoup some of the money. Usually it's around 50%.
This way an album costs me on average $5-6 and I have it in 3 different lossless formats, which is much better than just buying 256kbps digital downloads for $10 from itunes, Amazon music, or Google Play store.

Music for home use is stored in a NAS, and I have all the albums in 320kbps mp3 in a 128gb usb thumb drive for use in my car. I pretty much have my own radio station in my car.

 

[lsiberian]

Nostalgia. In truth the world is quickly moving toward the digital subscription based content model. It's happened to TV, movies, books and even comics.

 

[mtbdudex]

Can someone post fact based data of sales by physical media vs pure digital media? Charts show story of trend, is physical media at 25% or less? When it gets 10% then the nail is in the coffin IMO


Via Mikes brain/thumb interface, LLAP

 

[lsiberian]

Can someone post fact based data of sales by physical media vs pure digital media? Charts show story of trend, is physical media at 25% or less? When it gets 10% then the nail is in the coffin IMO


Via Mikes brain/thumb interface, LLAP

It's about 50/50 right now between the two with a slight edge toward physical media. Vinyl is the real growing market because it's tangible has real artwork and is very trendy in my generation.

 

[3db]

I have ripped all my CDs to a portable hard drive which I stream through my Western Digital. I listen to CDs if I didn't get the chance to rip to the drive or on bad days where I don't feel like sifting through files to select what i want to listen too. However, I will always own a physical copy of my music as I don't trust hard drives enough to discard them. I use a Sony BluRay player to play my CDs, not a dedicated CD player.

 

[selden]

One of the reasons for some of the high-end CD players, the ones based on PCs, is that they do a much better job of recovering from disc read errors. When there's an error, they reread the disc block several times, trying to get several rereads which provide identical data. The error recovery algorithms in less expensive players (including most that are used for ripping CDs) just "fill in the blanks", which is much less likely to produce the right sound.

 

[bikemig]

I ripped my music into lossless format a long time ago. I have one pretty nice CD player I still use for critical listening (a Marantz CD 6005). The SQ is great and I really like listening to my new CDs on it before I rip them. I guess it's a vestige from the past though; I don't know if I'll replace it if (and when) it dies.

 

[Kel]

I still used CD's until I got my Zeppelin Air, now I just stream all my songs to that.

Just like video's CD's take up space and you need something to put them all in which takes up space. That's why I sold them all in a job lot on eBay.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I still used CD's until I got my Zeppelin Air, now I just stream all my songs to that.

Just like video's CD's take up space and you need something to put them all in which takes up space. That's why I sold them all in a job lot on eBay.

I'm thinking of selling all my CDs on eBay too. How many CDs did you sell and how much did you make?

 

[Irvrobinson]

One of the reasons for some of the high-end CD players, the ones based on PCs, is that they do a much better job of recovering from disc read errors. When there's an error, they reread the disc block several times, trying to get several rereads which provide identical data. The error recovery algorithms in less expensive players (including most that are used for ripping CDs) just "fill in the blanks", which is much less likely to produce the right sound.

"Filling in the blanks" isn't how Redbook CD error recovery works. A bad frame read causes a drop-out which lasts some small fraction of a second. Since the data pits are burned in spirally the chance of very many consecutive frames being damaged beyond the error correction code limits is small. I have somewhere around three thousand CDs and I've never heard a drop-out. Owning thousands of CDs is also why I haven't bothered to bother ripping any of them. I'm too lazy to rip a majority of the collection, and the some-here-some-there scenario is annoying. I'll be buying CDs until they go out of production, since there's no qualitative advantage to any other format.

 

[3db]

"Filling in the blanks" isn't how Redbook CD error recovery works. A bad frame read causes a drop-out which lasts some small fraction of a second. Since the data pits are burned in spirally the chance of very many consecutive frames being damaged beyond the error correction code limits is small. I have somewhere around three thousand CDs and I've never heard a drop-out. Owning thousands of CDs is also why I haven't bothered to bother ripping any of them. I'm too lazy to rip a majority of the collection, and the some-here-some-there scenario is annoying. I'll be buying CDs until they go out of production, since there's no qualitative advantage to any other format.

IHO,vinyl offers a qualitative alternative to CD inspite of some of it's detractors attempting to put forth arguments that isn't 100% accurate. Even Gene and his friends prefer the sonically of a quality recorded album on vinyl over the CD format.

 

[Irvrobinson]

IHO,vinyl offers a qualitative alternative to CD inspite of some of it's detractors attempting to put forth arguments that isn't 100% accurate.

Wait, what? You mean like me? ;-)

 

[Alex2507]

Wait, what? You mean like me? ;-)

Do you deny that some LPs sound better than their CD counterparts?

IHO,vinyl offers a qualitative alternative to CD inspite of some of it's detractors attempting to put forth arguments that isn't 100% accurate. Even Gene and his friends prefer the sonically of a quality recorded album on vinyl over the CD format.

At least 60% of the time my assertions are 100% accurate.

 

[Irvrobinson]

Do you deny that some LPs sound better than their CD counterparts?

No, bad mastering or funky mixes can make even a superior medium sound worse.