Is It A Bad Time To Buy A CD Player?

[sonicman]

CD Changers are just so archaic technology - it's just begging to break.
Rip all cds to Flac. Add cheap NAS (with 2 tb green drives in raid 1) and SB Touch and you'll have all the benefits , conveniences and low-power.

Well, I can't disagree w/ the statement I've put in bold above - plastic heaven! But, I'm listening to a 5-disc box of Marin Marais's Viol Pieces at the moment, and it is irritating having to now get up after each CD to put a new disc into my DVD player -

 

[sonicman]

Dunno about sonicman but I'm 62 and grew up carefully taking vinyl LP's from the sleeve, gently removing the dust, placing it on the turntable, putting the tone arm on the begining of the disc, taking it off at the end, replacing the tone arm it on it's stand, taking the record off the turntable, and then ever so gently reinserting them in the sleeves in my den.

Taking a CD out of a jewel box. pushing a button, dropping it on a sjhelf, pushing another button, pushing another button to play it, and putting it back in the jewel box when it's over is not really a problem.

Well, I'm 65 y/o (good age to retire for me!) - and I also enjoy the experience of having the physical media in hand and reading the liner notes (so do I need to also scan all of those into PDF files for viewing?); and love looking at all of those plastic boxes sitting on their shelves.

I also belong to a classical music forum (Good-Music-Guide), and this discussion arises often - an age-related poll should have been taken because invariably the 'younger' people are in the 'ripping camp' and us oldsters still like to 'own & hoard' those jewel boxes and large classical music box sets -

 

[jonnythan]

I also belong to a classical music forum (Good-Music-Guide), and this discussion arises often - an age-related poll should have been taken because invariably the 'younger' people are in the 'ripping camp' and us oldsters still like to 'own & hoard' those jewel boxes and large classical music box sets -

it is irritating having to now get up after each CD to put a new disc into my DVD player -

Well I'm hearing conflicting info. It sounds like you want the convenience of not having to deal with the CDs, but you are nostalgic about having the CDs so you don't want to get rid of them.

Your choices are to either replace your clunky mechanical CD changer and hope for the best, or modernize your system and make it much more accessible, fast, and convenient. Personally I'm interested in the music I listen to and all of the physical crap is - and has always been - an impediment to enjoying the music. I grew up with vinyl and cassette, and CD was a godsend because it got the media out of the way like never before. No one actually enjoyed dealing with physical media, it was just rationalized because the music was cool and that was the way to get the music, so the media itself became "cool." And now everything is digital and we're able to reduce the physical aspect down to a simple software interface and, to me, that's phenomenal.

If you plucked someone from 1920 and sat them down in front of a record player, a cassette player, a CD player, and a Squeezebox, and showed them how to use each one, and loaded all of them with 500 albums, then asked which they want to use for the rest of your lives, which do you think they would pick?

If you want to continue using CDs because of nostalgia, that's fine with me.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Well, I'm 65 y/o (good age to retire for me!) - and I also enjoy the experience of having the physical media in hand and reading the liner notes (so do I need to also scan all of those into PDF files for viewing?); and love looking at all of those plastic boxes sitting on their shelves.

I also belong to a classical music forum (Good-Music-Guide), and this discussion arises often - an age-related poll should have been taken because invariably the 'younger' people are in the 'ripping camp' and us oldsters still like to 'own & hoard' those jewel boxes and large classical music box sets -

I don't understand how one conflicts with another. I also enjoy some classical music (new taste btw) and some jewel cases booklets are very artistic and informative. You'd still need to buy and store the CDs before you rip them.

However my main point is convenience and security; No need to explain point a, but security is the less you handle physical media the less chances it has to get scratched or otherwise damaged. FLACs sound exactly same as CDs.

I (kinda) understand the vinyl records crown, but in CDs vs Flacs where no difference.

I'd rather push couple of buttons on my media player rather to load cd changer with 6 disks every time I feel like listening to Beethoven's Symphonies

 

[Pyrrho]

What I am curious about is why anyone cares whether other people prefer to spend the time to load and organize their music on a hard drive or whether they prefer to take the time to load a CD into a player whenever they want to play music. Why care what other people prefer doing regarding this matter? It is not as if other people doing it one way or the other forces you to do likewise.

 

[jonnythan]

What I am curious about is why anyone cares whether other people prefer to spend the time to load and organize their music on a hard drive or whether they prefer to take the time to load a CD into a player whenever they want to play music. Why care what other people prefer doing regarding this matter? It is not as if other people doing it one way or the other forces you to do likewise.

Because they're asking for advice on how to proceed with new equipment. We are offering our opinions on the matter.

The real question is why you would come into this thread and post this.

 

[its phillip]

Well, I've thought of that too, but most of these discs are classical music and dealing w/ ID3 tagging can be a grueling and time consuming nightmare - and then to contemplate that many discs -

I agree with this. Tagging classical is such a pain

 

[Pyrrho]

What I am curious about is why anyone cares whether other people prefer to spend the time to load and organize their music on a hard drive or whether they prefer to take the time to load a CD into a player whenever they want to play music. Why care what other people prefer doing regarding this matter? It is not as if other people doing it one way or the other forces you to do likewise.

Because they're asking for advice on how to proceed with new equipment. We are offering our opinions on the matter.

The real question is why you would come into this thread and post this.

There is nothing wrong with doing things either way. It is purely a matter of preference. Neither approach is inherently bad. It is ridiculous to pretend otherwise.

This is obviously an issue that people have strong preferences both ways, and reminds me of the silly arguments I have seen online about whether paper books or electronic books are better. The reality is, there are distinct advantages to each, yet many people imagine that their own personal preference on the matter is some objective truth about what everyone should prefer.

So, I posted my response to try to get people to be reasonable and not foolishly suppose that a personal preference on how to do something is some objective fact about how others will be most happy doing it. The simple fact is, they are wrong to believe that everyone will be most happy doing it one way. This is extremely obvious from reading the conflicting opinions, but apparently it is too subtle to be noticed by some.

 

[3db]

If I won a huge lottery, this would be my CD player..

and this would be my turntable

The CD player is based on looks alone. I'm sure its no better than the CD playback capabilities of an Oppo but it stomps the Oppo in the looks department.

The turntable is even more stunning in real life. Dam fine turntable. I've heard one with the Delphi tone-arm going thru a Yamaha amplifier and Mirahe SM-3 speakers. That system sounded so good.

 

[lsiberian]

I have a cd player I never use. I wish it was much smaller and at some pint it may need to leave the rack.

 

[sonicman]

What I am curious about is why anyone cares whether other people prefer to spend the time to load and organize their music on a hard drive or whether they prefer to take the time to load a CD into a player whenever they want to play music. Why care what other people prefer doing regarding this matter? It is not as if other people doing it one way or the other forces you to do likewise.

Just returning to this thread after a little break - the rather aggressive suggestion to convert my CD collection to digital was an absolute turnoff for me, and I appreciate the comments of several posters (such as the one quoted above) to let one appreciate their music in whatever manner they enjoy -

As in the past, the multi-disc CD player described in my first post on this topic is now working again (a repeat experience) - so I'll just stick w/ this option until it happens again - I really need to update my DVD player and will go w/ a Blu-Ray option that will play any CD format desired + need a HDTV, so will visit the forums in question!

Thanks for all the input - I COMPLETELY understand the advantages of the digital options, and understand them so need no explanations, BUT collecting 4K CDs over nearly 30 years and now converting each to FLAC/MP3, is just not what I want to do at my age - now maybe I can get my son (IT guy) to do the conversions?

 

[skizzerflake]

It probably is a bad time to by an expensive CD player, since the market is so lagging. On the other hand, wait a few years. Turntables/LPs have come back, and cassettes have also seen a minor revival in some musical subcultures. It's just a matter of time before the need to have some piece of substance containing music comes back to CD's. After all, they are the easiest, most durable and most convenient of the physical media, the sound quality is good enough for most people and they come with a case with paper information like pictures and lyrics (paper might make a comeback too). As much as I like my iPhone and it's store of music, sometimes I want something to hold. The shelves fully of CDs I have are satisfying in a completely different way from a hard disk or flash with 80 ga-zillion bytes. This whole media migration ain't over yet and who knows, maybe 78's and hand-cranked victrolas will be the next retro thing.

 

[mentorron]

This thread shows how different we all are in our choices to reproduce music in our homes.
Although I have MP3 music on my portable music player, MP3 CDs for my Sony MP3 Walkman, and music stored on my hard-drive in various formats, My PREFERRED method of listening is via Red Book CDs through a Philips TDA1541 DAC (yes, I've listened to many others types, too..e.g Burr-Browns, etc) in a Sony CDP-950 (I cruise the Thrift stores hoping for a Sony esD).
In one room I have a computer with stored music on one wall (Altec-Lansing 2.1 speakers); an audio-video system on the other (Samsung LCD and DVD, Mission and Paradyne speakers), and an audio only system on the 3rd wall: Sony/JVC/Onkyo sources, Rotel/Adcom power, Martin-Logan speakers.
I prefer to keep all systems separate and not merge them as the trend now is.
Maybe it's because I'm 70 ?

 

[3db]

This thread shows how different we all are in our choices to reproduce music in our homes.
Although I have MP3 music on my portable music player, MP3 CDs for my Sony MP3 Walkman, and music stored on my hard-drive in various formats, My PREFERRED method of listening is via Red Book CDs through a Philips TDA1541 DAC (yes, I've listened to many others types, too..e.g Burr-Browns, etc) in a Sony CDP-950 (I cruise the Thrift stores hoping for a Sony esD).
In one room I have a computer with stored music on one wall (Altec-Lansing 2.1 speakers); an audio-video system on the other (Samsung LCD and DVD, Mission and Paradyne speakers), and an audio only system on the 3rd wall: Sony/JVC/Onkyo sources, Rotel/Adcom power, Martin-Logan speakers.
I prefer to keep all systems separate and not merge them as the trend now is.
Maybe it's because I'm 70 ?

No mention of a turntable. Good heavens man!! Where is your turntable?

 

[mentorron]

Where's my turntable?
Well I DO have one, but it's just an ION TT-USB10 unit with built-in preamp. It's for used discs I occasionally pick up at the Thrift stores of music which I can't find on CD. I did "upgrade" to the elliptical stylus. I bought the TT because my wife had complained that she had several LPs that she could never listen to any more. She has an old "console" stereo (piece of fine furniture) which hasn't worked fo a decade or so with a changer and ceramic cartridge.
I sold my own equipment and LP collection in the early '90s when I did a long distance move.
My best recollection was that I had:
a Dynavector moving coil cartridge
an SME tone arm
a Thorens turntable
Dynaco tube preamp and power amp
Acoustic Research AR-2Ax speakers