How many of you still use CDs?

I've actually recently started buying again after years and years of mp3 only. I still use ipod when I want to listen to something on my own. Mostly though I listen to stuff together with my wife. Suits us when cooking together or in the car.

I was in HMV for the first time in ages last Saturday. I must say it was great to see all the vinyl in there. Got quite nostalgic over all the beautiful cover art and memories of my own excitement when I bought them first time around. I can see why people are getting back into it. Sometimes it is nice to own and appreciate physical things.
 
Still buy them. Admittedly, they immediately get ripped to FLAC on the mediaserver and then go into the racking.

While it's still cheaper to buy the CD and rip it yourself than buy the lossless digital version it's a no brainer. Plus lots of the stuff I buy doesn't exist on lossless digital sites.

Same with vinyl, but that goes to 24bit 96khz FLAC mainly.

I did try some HDTracks purchases, but some of them were brickwalled to hell, which for 'studio masters' was utterly ridiculous.
 
TheVoice said:
Other than size, what's the difference? :confused:
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This is how it's done

TheSkateyBird said:
Update on mine, went to Homebase, bought some finishing strips and some metal angles. The result:

12049648_10206050829735429_173207135654867618_n.jpg


Get some of the nice artwork up on show.
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I would rather buy physical media than pay the exact same price for a poorer recording that has no physical format.

It really is that simple, you buy a digital download, your milked, CD's were way overpriced in their day, but to spend the same on a digital copy at 320mb should come with a free tattoo on your forehead.

As for playing music, well I have not done so for years, high res music came, and we continued to get appalling sound engineers up the levels on "re-masters" or release higher res music mastered from lower res masters (Eh?). Anything decent available on 24/192?

Now, if I could buy decent music that I enjoy not in MP3 format, for less than a CD actually costs seeing as the only major costs (physical) are reduced, with a bit of artwork etc, maybe I would be interested.

Until then I will look for older CD's second hand to copy, or just buy whatever is available at discount when it takes my fancy, and store it on my PC not as an MP3.

(Though take it all with a pinch of salt as I am still living in the dark ages here)
 
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I was an early adopter to digital media although this was obtained by ripping Cd's and playing them on one of the first phillips 128kb music sticks which was expensive and could only hold a few songs in dreadful quality - at the time it seemed very modern with no skipping etc.

I then moved to ipod but still bought the vast majority of my music on cd so it was easy to take into the car. After buying hifi equipment I then burnt all my CD's again to flack and started using the files via DLNA and android smart phones. The quality was obviously very good.

I then got into lossless and it was at this point that I wondered whether the extra I was paying vs a CD was much better, indeed electronic music apart I couldn't hear much of a difference. After an epiphany I realised I hadn't actually listened to music on my hifi for ages - in fact it had mainly been used for TV & Movies. I sold the hifi and replaced it with SONOS equipment, which whilst didn't sound as good sounded "good enough" for the rock and pop type stuff I normally play.

The SONOS equipment meant that a streaming service was more convenient and I noticed my samsung phone gave me a free trial of google music. In all honesty I couldn't tell any significant difference between the stream and the CD's. Then Vodafone gave me spotify and 20gb a month on my new contract and I could set that to ultra quality. I now have no need to buy any CD's as all my music comes through this service.

I still buy physical bluray as the quality if obviously better than that available via a stream and I like physical media. I now feel the convenience and quality of music streaming has made CD's irrelevant. For the cost of a CD every month - even if you don't get it free or on offer which they all seem to be with something or other that you buy, its hard to make a sensible argument for continuing to buy physical CD's.
 
I still buy CD's, I rip them to flac for my main system and then rip them to MP3 for my phone (at least until phones have enough memory to hold all my music in lossless, could be a while before Apple release an iPhone with 500GB of storage) and then they get stored away.

I have recently started buying sacd's but only artists I really like and only if they have multichannel sound as the benefit of sacd 2 channel sound to my ears over cd is small but the multichannel 5.1 can be very entertaining on a decent surround setup, I wish I had bought some of the albums years ago as most of the good stuff I like (Depeche Mode for example) is no longer available in the format and so I have to pay through the nose for the albums on eBay etc.
 
Last night I did a blind test with my eldest choosing what order I listened to them.
I chose Enter Sandman by Metallica because I personally believe it is one of the best songs ever recorded and I know every nuance of it.
I had 128, 196, 256 & 320 MP3s plus a normal Flac and a 24bit 200 meg Flac and I very quickly got down to only 2 tracks that there was only a slight difference but could have been down to a remix.
I chose my 1 & 2 which were the 24 bit and the normal Flac which totally outshone the MP3s and this is with 58 year old hearing that has stood on stage with rock bands since 1970.
 
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