Collecting CD's / Listening to music on an MP3 player

[Jarick]

Vinyl collecting has been big for many years now, but something I'm seeing recently is people starting to collect music on CD's again and either listen on a portable CD player or rip to digital and listen on a dedicated music device.

There's a few benefits usually cited:

• You actually own the music instead of just renting it
• You could possibly save money - this probably depends on how you get your music (used vs new)
• You can listen in a higher fidelity format - this I doubt because compression nowadays is amazing and you can get lossless through streaming sites anyways
• You are more engaged with the music as there's less distractions and you're more committed to the album

The last point is most interesting to me. Back in the CD era, I'd get an album and listen to it continuously. You end up learning the album a lot more. Now with streaming you can jump around a lot easier onto something else. There's songs or albums I hear and really like then completely forget about later on and never revisit. I only end up really getting into a small handful of new albums each year.

I'm giving this a shot to see what it's like. I've still got a big box full of CD's from my younger days and grabbed a USB CD drive as they're pretty cheap. Starting to rip everything in a lossless format although I may end up swapping over to 320 kbps MP3. Also ordered an inexpensive digital music player, basically an updated version of an iPod.

Funny thing is the second CD I tried to rip failed due to scratches which was a throwback! I used to rip all my music onto my computer and definitely had a number of CD's that I had to repair scratches on. We'll see if I can't get some of these figured out.

For indie bands you can buy music off Bandcamp and then download lossless formats, which I've done for a handful of groups that weren't on streaming. I've also got a bunch of music from small local bands we used to play with back in the day, so it will be fun to find those and listen again.

 

[Jarick]

Another funny follow up, on the disc that wouldn't import I tried some Scratch X which helped a little bit but there was still a really bad scratch that several songs wouldn't read. After several tries that didn't work, I tried some Music Nomad guitar polish and it immediately read the rest of the disc perfectly!

 

[bucephalus]

Vinyl collecting has been big for many years now, but something I'm seeing recently is people starting to collect music on CD's again and either listen on a portable CD player or rip to digital and listen on a dedicated music device.

There's a few benefits usually cited:

• You actually own the music instead of just renting it
• You could possibly save money - this probably depends on how you get your music (used vs new)
• You can listen in a higher fidelity format - this I doubt because compression nowadays is amazing and you can get lossless through streaming sites anyways
• You are more engaged with the music as there's less distractions and you're more committed to the album

The last point is most interesting to me. Back in the CD era, I'd get an album and listen to it continuously. You end up learning the album a lot more. Now with streaming you can jump around a lot easier onto something else. There's songs or albums I hear and really like then completely forget about later on and never revisit. I only end up really getting into a small handful of new albums each year.

I'm giving this a shot to see what it's like. I've still got a big box full of CD's from my younger days and grabbed a USB CD drive as they're pretty cheap. Starting to rip everything in a lossless format although I may end up swapping over to 320 kbps MP3. Also ordered an inexpensive digital music player, basically an updated version of an iPod.

Funny thing is the second CD I tried to rip failed due to scratches which was a throwback! I used to rip all my music onto my computer and definitely had a number of CD's that I had to repair scratches on. We'll see if I can't get some of these figured out.

For indie bands you can buy music off Bandcamp and then download lossless formats, which I've done for a handful of groups that weren't on streaming. I've also got a bunch of music from small local bands we used to play with back in the day, so it will be fun to find those and listen again.

I digitised my 1000 plus cd collection to flac about 7 years ago and put the CDs in the loft (space reasons). It's nice not trying to find what you want when you haven't put them back properly

 

[Jarick]

I digitised my 1000 plus cd collection to flac about 7 years ago and put the CDs in the loft (space reasons). It's nice not trying to find what you want when you haven't put them back properly

Oh yeah that too lol. I grabbed five cases to try ripping and two of them were empty of course.

 

[dbagchee]

If you’re going through the trouble of ripping, I would recommend sticking with a lossless format instead of mp3. That way your files are pretty much future proof. I have so much old music I ripped at 128/256 and my CDs of those are long gone, so just stream them now.

I try to listen (and generally prefer) to an album at a time for several of the reasons you mentioned. Though just like with CDs it is convenient to be able to skip a track now and then.

Technically you can still buy music digitally too so you download and own it, if there is music you don’t already own on CD.

 

[Aleksi]

I've recently sold most of my CDs, 250 of them. I was surprised people actually want them! And at decent prices for most of them. I'm down to 20-30 CDs that just aren't moving, mostly because they're either too obscure or just a bit shit lol

 

[Jarick]

If you’re going through the trouble of ripping, I would recommend sticking with a lossless format instead of mp3. That way your files are pretty much future proof. I have so much old music I ripped at 128/256 and my CDs of those are long gone, so just stream them now.

I try to listen (and generally prefer) to an album at a time for several of the reasons you mentioned. Though just like with CDs it is convenient to be able to skip a track now and then.

Technically you can still buy music digitally too so you download and own it, if there is music you don’t already own on CD.

I'm starting out (again) in Apple lossless...I was a bit worried some devices wouldn't play them but sounds like it won't be an issue. Before I switched to Mac in the early 2000's I did 192 kbps CBR MP3's. Re-ripped a lot of it after I switched to Mac around 2010 using Apple's AAC lossy format. Now I'm going to likely stick with the ALAC Apple lossless format as you can convert back to FLAC without degredation. Macs handle ALAC natively and don't handle FLAC so may as well do the Apple thing.

I actually spent an hour doing ABX testing yesterday to see if I could tell the difference in compression. There's a good website that has free tests that are fun to mess with:

https://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html

My results:

• 96 kbps MP3's were really easy to hear the difference - nearly aced it at 96% correct
• 128 kbps was a little trickier depending on the song - 76% correct (basically anything with cymbals)
• 160 kbps was much more subtle, just a little loss in high frequency air to me - I got 68% correct
• 192 kbps was a complete guess and I was right around 60% correct
• 320 kbps I had no shot at all, 48% correct (basically coin flips)

Lastly on the music front I may actually run to a local goodwill or used book place to flip through the CD's to see if there's anything there. I'm planning on taking an inventory of what I've got now and then look at my favorite albums from streaming and start to grab some of those. I don't plan to cancel streaming as it's good for discovery and playlists and honestly my car has Apple Play but doesn't have a CD player. But I'll have the option to make time to listen to music without a phone and see how that goes.

 

[Jarick]

Okay I grabbed another stack of CD's - holy nostalgia! First one on the pile was Green Day Dookie, which I got for Christmas in 1994. It's frankly awesome holding the actual physical albums again.

 

[Aleksi]

I have to say it was fun opening the boxes and going through my collection. I packed them when we moved 9 years ago and I hadn't touched them since. A pile of Symphony X albums that I'd rather never listen to again I was really into Steven Wilson at one point, had all the Porcupine Tree stuff up to the incident as well as the solo albums and side projects.

I stared at the Yes digipaks for a while because they were just so beautiful.

 

[Alex Kenivel]

I maybe ripped no more than 5 actual albums in my life. Napster was dominating when I was in the 8th grade so I had no use for buying CDs anymore


I'm also a minimalist due to losing all of my possessions as a young adult.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

I have nostalgia for carrying a discman around and collecting CD’s, reading booklets and visiting music shops (especially while travelling). I really couldn’t think of much worse than listening to CD’s these days aside from in the car (although car play largely solves that).

Several streaming sites offer lossless and the convenience is hard to beat. I have no issue listening to albums in full, and even with CD’s I’d rip music to listen on my computer as well as playing CD’s back elsewhere.

SO MUCH NOSTALGIA FOR THIS

 

[Jarick]

I have nostalgia for carrying a discman around and collecting CD’s, reading booklets and visiting music shops (especially while travelling). I really couldn’t think of much worse than listening to CD’s these days aside from in the car (although car play largely solves that).

Several streaming sites offer lossless and the convenience is hard to beat. I have no issue listening to albums in full, and even with CD’s I’d rip music to listen on my computer as well as playing CD’s back elsewhere.

SO MUCH NOSTALGIA FOR THIS View attachment 57399

Totally! I had an early I think it was Sanyo or something because I couldn't afford a Sony, and there was no skip protection. Then I started working at Best Buy and got a nice Sony walkman with better headphones as I went to a big college and had to walk around a lot and ride buses to get between campuses. At some point I got a very early cheap MP3 player but I think it only held 16 GB or something small not even a full album worth.

Or in the car, I had a massive flip book full of CD's. At some point I may have had two? I liked to put the cover art in the top row and CD in the bottom row to keep it organized (not mine but you get the idea):

Then I got a CD player in my car that could read MP3 CD's which was awesome. I could burn one CD with about ten albums on it, and then kept all of them in the visor:

Upgrading to a 60 gb iPod was huge, I could store all my music and even listen to podcasts. The pain was trying to transfer them all the time but that was life back then.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

so much relate here. I had a few huge CD wallets with everything in, and the CD cases on shelves. I remember mp3 CD’s coming in and that feeling really cutting edge. iPod’s were fun too but that late 90’s/early 2000’s era was just the best for physical media. I think tech designs were more fun and personalised then, you don’t really buy tech now for how it looks at all - it’s almost entirely function driven (phones, TV’s, soundbars all look the same).

 

[nitrateaudio]

I still buy and collect CDs

 

[Progressive_disclosure]

We have a big box of CD’s where we still haven’t digitized all of them (Apple lossless here too), but most of them at least. With streaming available we seldom use the files but they are there. The plan is to sell off or donate them but now it sounds like it could be an idea to hold off a while longer if interest in CD’s is returning.

 

[Jarick]

so much relate here. I had a few huge CD wallets with everything in, and the CD cases on shelves. I remember mp3 CD’s coming in and that feeling really cutting edge. iPod’s were fun too but that late 90’s/early 2000’s era was just the best for physical media. I think tech designs were more fun and personalised then, you don’t really buy tech now for how it looks at all - it’s almost entirely function driven (phones, TV’s, soundbars all look the same).

It’s crazy that almost every CD I pick up to import has some kind of memory attached. Certainly don’t get the same experience with streaming.

I’ll have to figure out if I want to try and sync my library with Apple to integrate back into the cloud or not. Heard mixed things.

 

[HotRats]

I still have my CD colletion in the basement, it's around 1000 CDs but I will never go back to them or flip books in the car. When I moved to my current house I did't even bothered to put them on display.

For many years I had a car that had no cd player, nor an aux in, and had to bring my portable cd player and use this!
You don't really want to go back to this mostruosity.

When the ipod nano came out I moved away from buying cds and started buying digital records (and also ripped my complete CD collection and uploaded to apple servers) but when apple streaming started I immeditely subscribed to it and that made me save at least 1k € per year and opened up to the discoverey of loads and loads of new music.

I love the physical object but not enough for going back.

 

[Jarick]

Oh yeah, I don't want to actually listen to the CD's, just thinking about the experience and ownership of music.

Honestly if there was an app that literally locked you to one album until you virtually switched it I'd be into that. I just want that kind of forced focus. That's another byproduct of ADHD brain on top of everything all of the time access.

One thing as I'm listening to the lossless rips is there's often a remastered version on streaming. It's always a little louder and a little more compressed and what not. Not sure how I feel about that.

There's also the question of one hit wonder stuff or singles...that's where streaming is awesome. Or making playlists or lists like top 50 songs of the decade and what not.