Continuing with CDs?

i don't know what side of the argument y'all fall with regards to modern era vinyl vs CDs but i've been so cautious lately (burned by the great 4 Men With Beards wars) and really try to make sure the vinyl pressing is definitely high quality (i.e. the Stereolab reissues, Light in the Attic, Tone Poet Blue Note, Verve Acoustic, U2 reissues tbh), because sometimes i lean towards getting the CD. i think it's probably better now than the flimsy '90s but idk, i'm not one of those guys with one of those programs that shows a seismograph looking thing for audio. maybe i'm way off base.

I mean, I hear this about vinyl a lot but I've never found it to hold true in my home listening... CDs just sound better most of the time. One might argue that over time since most of my listening is digital sources that I've accumulated stereo equipment that complements those sources. I bought vinyl when I was younger because it was often significantly cheaper than the CD, or it was something that wasn't available on CD yet. But I always thought of it as a budget medium, to be put up with when necessary. Lacking even the utility of cassettes which could be listened to in the car or in a walkman.

I mean, you used to go to a record store and what they had was what you chose from, medium be damned... sure you could look for stuff, even place special orders, but if you wanted to hear it and could afford it, you bought it when it was in your hands. So I used to be fine with rough-sounding vinyl because pre-Internet it was buy the record or probably not be able to hear the album at all. Now I can check out an album online, read reviews of the mastering quality of the CD reissue, and buy that with minimal shipping fees. The album now comes before the medium, which is exactly the opposite of my formative years. The circumstances of your listening used to choose you, now you choose them.

So barring truly terrible CD mastering jobs (easy to find warnings about online), the entire idea of which medium has the edge in sound quality is just sort of alien to my process. My listening ecosystem is set up for digital. No compelling reason to fuck with it. Pretty much everything I buy on CD or FLAC sounds great. My record player(s) are there if I need them.

whatever old Canadian pressing of Aja i had sounded like trash next to whatever mastering is on Spotify. Huge variation among pressings of big releases.

(and yeah my vinyl and digital systems are comparable bla bla)

Reading a comment quite a bit up thread reminded me of the olden days when I thought my CD collection was some kind of pension fund.

I spend 95% of my time listening to digital files on my laptop, through headphones. (Good headphones, TBF — Sony MDR-7506s, which are what musicians use in the recording studio.) Speakers and vinyl vs CD affecting the sound as it floats through the room? Not really an issue.

i'm not one of those guys with one of those programs that shows a seismograph looking thing for audio.

lol, it me

it's honestly one of those things i wish i had the time to do, i think it would at least be informative w/r/t whether or not i should upgrade something. it's rare that i notice a lesser version of an album. though i did have a really lousy repress of the first Led Zep album which immediately went to a friend who confessed to me he collected pressings of LZ1.

it’s not iust slick stuff, lofi or raw metal stuff can get totally fucked over by remastering that negatively alters the distortion texture, makes for a whole new and unsatisfying brain massage time

I spent some time reading up on speaker positioning, height, wall surfaces, etc because that stuff is easy and inexpensive to optimize. Make a noticeable difference. (Also my new place has a bedroom with big barn doors and I put speakers on either side of them... with a big open space between them it's astounding how much stereo imaging you get)

honestly, when all is said and done, i kinda can't believe there hasn't been more of a hepcat resurgence in reel to reel tape and players because they sound best of all.

It's happening, but too expensive for most.

https://store.acousticsounds.com/d/180395/The_White_Stripes-Elephant-14_Inch_-_15_IPS_Tape

reel-to-reels are sort of a pain in the ass to use (do I have one? of course I do) and the amount of pre-recorded media available is vanishingly small and the non-classical stuff is stupid expensive

i love Gillian Welch and hope she and Rawlings make some good money from this but it's definitely a pricey niche interest.

https://store.aconyrecords.com/products/the-harrow-the-harvest-reel-to-reel?variant=40182622388311

re: Spotify, that's another reason why I kept CD's - I can actually choose the mastering I want to listen to and not be stuck with whatever brickwall mastering that's your only choice on Spotify. Before Tom Petty died, he had this conversation with the guy in charge of the technical aspects of reissuing and distributing his catalog, and while Petty cared enough about sound quality NOT to subject his physical reissues to excessive compression, the compromise was that all streaming and possibly downloads (at least not from high-end vendors) would be brickwalled just so his music would be as "loud" as everyone else's on Spotify and elsewhere.

whatever old Canadian pressing of Aja i had sounded like trash next to whatever mastering is on Spotify. Huge variation among pressings of big releases.

i love Gillian Welch and hope she and Rawlings make some good money from this but it's definitely a pricey niche interest.

https://store.aconyrecords.com/products/the-harrow-the-harvest-reel-to-reel?variant=40182622388311🕸

we could do an entire survey of what the recordings on spotify are mastered toward, and whether settings make
it differ. do they change their EQ based on device? I’ve
never looked into it

CD mastering is fun. I had a discman and tape adapter for the car and it was such a shitshow

similarly to how I’m on a mobile app and keep accidentally putting new lines in my mobile posts

The blank tape reels alone for that Gillian Welch release cost $300 so they aren't soaking you to the degree it might seem

So many Canadian records got the shit treatment, like the cutting engineer was sent a 3rd-generation tape to master from and he had 10 cuts to get done that day and it was almost lunchtime so just crank something out.

Makes sense, from the scattered quality of the handful I've had. I once sold a copy of Space Oddity on discogs and the guy asked me if I had any more Canadian pressed classic rock because he'd gotten really into that. Not an interest I've heard of before or since. I think he was in the Sates. Maybe he had a nostalgia for the sound of vinyl copied to tape... copied to another tape.

do they change their EQ based on device?

No. I always poke at those settings. EQ is off/flat by default but there is normalization enabled... which makes sense to me given that there whole thing is playlists from scattered sources. I always disable it because I'm nuts.

if you're into flying the black flag one thing i've noticed about recent group releases is that a lot of them are "web rips" from tidal/qobuz/various other high quality streaming service. my question is whether these rips have actually cracked open the DRM egg that is a tidal/qobuz stream and are able to access the delicious lossless file inside, or are instead just a mic-out WAV record of a tidal stream after the digital to analogue conversion has already happened. hard to say.

back in the day some releases would advertise that it was downloaded directly from the itunes store. so at least you'd know it was 256kbps AAC.

another reason why it can be better to rip your own. you control the chain of custody. if you care about this stuff.

pretty sure people are using stream rippers for that web rip stuff, but as you say... it's not easy to know for sure

my question is whether these rips have actually cracked open the DRM egg that is a tidal/qobuz stream and are able to access the delicious lossless file inside

I haven't tested this personally, but I just looked to see what tools people have used to do this, and a quick skim of the source of a Tidal downloader seems to indicate it's downloading and decrypting. So if that one is still being used, it's cracking the egg

It's similar to the way eBook decrypters work, you (or the software) digs into the official app's code or communications with their servers and pulls your user token out which can then be used to decrypt the files/stream to allow you do whatever want with them. I would guess they're not overly worried about it because it's a pain in the ass to do it and you probably need an active subscription to keep ripping from their servers anyway. I spent a fun evening decrypting my Nook eBook files when I stopped using Nook eReaders... I'd guess that most people would give up in disgust trying to do that. It's "easy" once you've spent 4-6 hours locating all the random freeware you need to do it and working through the half-assed instructions across a dozen message boards.

i sort of assumed tidal drm was going to be really tough like widevine

Widevine is really tough... still got cracked.

Bought a new/not-used triple CD set yesterday.
Sickening.
What's going to become of me??

what was it?

that's how it always begins. very small.

It was the Steve Swell Fire Into Music Quartet w/ Jemeel Moondoc, William Parker & Hamid Drake on Rogueart.

That's a good set.

Yeah I'm excited. But also... not excited, even anxious, to start buying new CDs.

(f hazel, i have just sent to ilx-mail. nothing exciting, feel free to ignore)

Sale on hat hut-affiliated labels bringing things down to $7 mostly.
https://www.squidco.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=S&Category_Code=HATSALE

Wow thanks, that sale looks great! I had to be careful to get stuff I didn't already own, packaged with a different name so it's not always obvious (e.g. Coltrane's "One Up, One Down" at the Half Note, a bunch of Miles Davis material already released in the Columbia "bootleg" series, etc.).

Yeah, it’s a little confusing, but at $7 apiece, even if I own one half of the package in another format, it’s no big deal. I got a pair of the aylers, plus one each by Marion brown, shepp, Cecil, and Paul bley.

This could/should probably be on a different thread but... My kid got given a CD player recently, but it's got a weird 3-pin plug that I have no idea what to do with. I've tried Googling it, and I think it's called an 'alter plug' but I can't find any real advice about adapters or if I can switch it out for a 'normal' plug. Anyone got any ideas?

https://i.imgur.com/WITJv5S.png

that's a type L 3-pin plug as used in italy (and chile!)

https://www.worldstandards.eu/electricity/plugs-and-sockets/

Thanks Nick! Having a dig around, I've noticed the word Conblock on it - looks like a connector they used to use in the 90s.

https://www.hifiwigwam.com/threads/what-sort-of-plug-is-this.122336/

okay that is a different thing than I was saying, yours has a middle pin that's longer than the other two. Either way I'm guessing you can just swap it out for a standard uk plug?

says random internet reply guy who doesn't really know what he's talking about

I'm entirely here for it - you know more than me! Looks like I need a UK plug, aye. It has the correct, er, wires etc so should be fine.

hey koogs, I can help you out! ilx-mail me again with your email address

I finally got the last of my CDs that had been in storage at my folks' place for 18+ years. For me, this is 31 years of my life, all brought together for the first time.

https://musicophilia.files.wordpress.com/2024/04/20240425_234708.jpg

Getting them all organized (and reuniting the discs eith cases with booklets--I used a dozen of those binders back in the 90s to early 00s) brought a flood of memories of times, people, places, versions of myself. I was amazed how often I could remember what shop I got an album in, and when...

But I think it also cements the reality that, at this point, I'm really *not* "continuing with CDs". Because I've been 95%+ digital purchases since Covid, and almost none of the shops sell CDs in my region anymore, and--well, the shelves are completely full now.

Anybody succeeded in instituting a one-in-one-out policy with physical media?

I have, but it definitely requires some effort in the culling. I have to do it in batches where I'll go through and think "what have I not listened to in a while and may not want to keep?" I'll end up with a little stack of CD's and that'll be my primary listening for a few days. Either it'll be a nice way of rediscovering something or it'll be one for the sell pile.

@ Soundslike - that is an absolutely beautiful photo.

I got rid of my CDs about ten years ago and rather regret it. Luckily I've been able to repurchase a few given the bargain-basement second hand prices right now. Although if I did still have them I really don't have the wallspace to showcase them as lovingly as Soundslike, they'd probably be in a box/binder somewhere.

I love unboxing stuff ive stashed away somewhere for whatever reason (space, moving, travel, no current interest in etc). 18 years is a long time!

I've forever given up physical media, but pictures of full CD racks brings back the memories/feelings.

^^

love seeing your photo, Soundsalike

Two copies of Nashville!