expensive hifis and speakers just to play burned cds am i wasting my money

[theflyingwasp]

hi everyone im very new to hifi .i have a very large collection of cds just over 7000 .i dont say this to beat on my chest.its just that i have been using an old technics hifi and my blu ray player to play music for quite a few years now,and recently been playing them through my yamaha ysp 2200 soundbar.its time to upgrade i have the funds to buy a roksan hifi and other brands of hifi upto that pricepoint and speakers upto £1000.am i wasting my money buying such expensive equipment just to play burned cds.is the quality of music on burned discs rubbish compared to proper cds.

 

[Overdose]

hi everyone im very new to hifi .i have a very large collection of cds just over 7000 .i dont say this to beat on my chest.its just that i have been using an old technics hifi and my blu ray player to play music for quite a few years now,and recently been playing them through my yamaha ysp 2200 soundbar.its time to upgrade i have the funds to buy a roksan hifi and other brands of hifi upto that pricepoint and speakers upto £1000.am i wasting my money buying such expensive equipment just to play burned cds.is the quality of music on burned discs rubbish compared to proper cds.

Are all of your CDs 'burned'?

When you say 'burned', do you mean audio CDs created from mp3s?

 

[BenLaw]

How many of these 7000 have you paid for?

 

[theflyingwasp]

yes should have said.sorry

 

[theflyingwasp]

about 2500 are from itunes on my very old pc and the rest were actual cds imported into itunes.i then sold all them and have just been burning albums to disc for work and the car for about 2 years now.

 

[MajorFubar]

So let me get this right...you've burned 7000 CDs from downloaded MP3s?

Daft question, but why? And yes, the quality of the MP3s will determine how good they're going to sound (or not).

 

[MajorFubar]

This isn't answering your question either, but you do know don't you that after you've sold the CDs it's illegal to keep copies of them...

 

[theflyingwasp]

yes your quite right on that one.but nobody wants the actual cd once its imported to itunes.hence the reason im in the s#@t now i want to buy a proper hifi system .apple have taken away the optical drive aswell its all very annoying.

 

[bigfish786]

personally, i think copy cd's are alright for use in the car, but for home use they really do lack quality.

if you have all your music on itunes i think you are better off buying some kit to stream that music to an amp, and decent speakers.

i'm sure some people will know specifically what to reccomend, but i wouldn't bother with an expensive cd player.

 

[MajorFubar]

cheap cd/dvd rom drives for your computer can be found on ebay. I bought one for £15 specifically for ripping my CDs (only 480-odd!) and the results it gives are absolutely identical to the rips from the drive in my Mac, as proved in the recent thread I posted.

There's not much you can do to rejouvenate the MP3s you've already ripped, but to be honest, if you ripped them all at 320kbps, you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference without a side-by-side comparison, and some people can't tell even then.

 

[Overdose]

about 2500 are from itunes on my very old pc and the rest were actual cds imported into itunes.i then sold all them and have just been burning albums to disc for work and the car for about 2 years now.

Taken aside the legality issue, I would first consolidate all of your music onto one HDD preferably an (external one). Using iTunes Match, you can then create a complete copy of your library in the cloud. This library will be at 256 Kbps AAC and you are likely to not notice a differenc between these and the original CD.

You have no CDs left so these files will be as good as your are likey to get and will be the new lowest denominator for bit rate. Create a new iTunes library on your Mac HDD by downloading your cloud library and use this as a primary library, back up the Mac with Time Machine on the spare HDD and do so again on a regular basis.

From here you will be well on your way to an organised library that will sound great through a hifi of some description. I could make a recomendation here too, but that's for another time.

 

[Overdose]

cheap cd/dvd rom drives for your computer can be found on ebay. I bought one for £15 specifically for ripping my CDs (only 480-odd!) and the results it gives are absolutely identical to the rips from the drive in my Mac, as proved in the recent thread I posted.

There's not much you can do to rejouvenate the MP3s you've already ripped, but to be honest, if you ripped them all at 320kbps, you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference without a side-by-side comparison, and some people can't tell even then.

+1 for that too.

 

[BenLaw]

cheap cd/dvd rom drives for your computer can be found on ebay. I bought one for £15 specifically for ripping my CDs (only 480-odd!) and the results it gives are absolutely identical to the rips from the drive in my Mac, as proved in the recent thread I posted.

There's not much you can do to rejouvenate the MP3s you've already ripped, but to be honest, if you ripped them all at 320kbps, you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference without a side-by-side comparison, and some people can't tell even then.

I agree.

If my CDs weren't redbook I'd be looking at a way of streaming my collection rather than bothering with a CDP. But, no, decent amplification and speakers will not be wasted.

 

[the record spot]

So let me get this right...you've burned 7000 CDs from downloaded MP3s?

Daft question, but why? And yes, the quality of the MP3s will determine how good they're going to sound (or not).

I'd be inclined to think that the quality of the underlying recording and its subsequent mastering is the real benchmark of how good the resulting rip's going to be, not the MP3 rate per se.

 

[MajorFubar]

So let me get this right...you've burned 7000 CDs from downloaded MP3s?

Daft question, but why? And yes, the quality of the MP3s will determine how good they're going to sound (or not).

I'd be inclined to think that the quality of the underlying recording and its subsequent mastering is the real benchmark of how good the resulting rip's going to be, not the MP3 rate per se.

I deliberately chose my words carefully. Poor-quality MP3s are still going to sound rubbish no matter what you play them on. I didn't say all MP3s were rubbish, I said that their quality will determine how good they're going to sound. Unless you have a faulty CD ROM drive it's pretty hard to make a lousy WAV, FLAC or ALAC rip, but there are quite a few opportunities to c-o-c-k it up making MP3s.

 

[the record spot]

Fair enough, so you're saying the quality of the hardware has an impact in the transference? Or the bitrate that you choose?

 

[Overdose]

So let me get this right...you've burned 7000 CDs from downloaded MP3s?

Daft question, but why? And yes, the quality of the MP3s will determine how good they're going to sound (or not).

I'd be inclined to think that the quality of the underlying recording and its subsequent mastering is the real benchmark of how good the resulting rip's going to be, not the MP3 rate per se.

Well, there are some factors that might be an issue.

No error correction

Scratched/dirty CDs

Low bit rate (sub 128Kbps)

Old mp3 encoder using outdated algorithms

Failing optical drive

All of the above can contribute to less than optimum mp3 rips, with various audible artifacts.

 

[Frank Harvey]

I listen to a lot of 128kbps electronica (more background music than anything else) and it sounds fine, although I wouldn't recommend it for rock. I agree with RS.

 

[the record spot]

Yes, this I get, but all things being equal, and with a decent rate (128kbps upwards), the recording quality and mastering is the real barometer, not the format you choose. But this is more like an infrstructure issue than anything else - the physical media is scratched, the drive is flaky, the bitrate is too low, etc.

 

[MajorFubar]

Fair enough, so you're saying the quality of the hardware has an impact in the transference? Or the bitrate that you choose?

Neither really, well not directly. I'm just saying that I've heard some MP3s on friends/colleagues devices that they think are absolutely fine, and to my ears they would be unlistenable. The quality can be really variable. But you're absolutely right that you can't just tie it down to bitrate. I heard what was purportedly a 320k MP3 on someone's MP3 player a few months ago but IMO it had been upsampled from about 96K or maybe 128K at best, but he thought it sounded brilliant.

 

[BigH]

I just ripped a load of my cds onto cds for demos on my computer and I could not tell the difference between the 2, also got some free tracks (mp3) off Amazon and they were fine also. The only thing that did not seem to work was fast forwarding.

 

[manicm]

Forgetting all the legal implications etc etc, in a word yes it's a waste of good hifi, because even if you burn CDS from uncompressed/lossless audio it is still highly susceptible to the brand of discs you use, and the burning software as well. I've done this for years, I know.

Having said that, use your ears! So your burned CDs may still sound good!

 

[Overdose]

Yes, this I get, but all things being equal, and with a decent rate (128kbps upwards), the recording quality and mastering is the real barometer, not the format you choose. But this is more like an infrstructure issue than anything else - the physical media is scratched, the drive is flaky, the bitrate is too low, etc.

I agree, but I'm not sure that the OPs 'collection' can be considered as having any consistency. It looks to me like there are a lot of factors that need to be mitigated and I think the only way to do this would be to run through with iTunes match. At least then the collection would have some consistency.

 

[SpursGator]

The OP never said in what format the CDs were ripped into iTunes. Some of them might be in a lossless format - who knows.

I agree with a couple of posters here. You need first of all to get everything you've got onto a computer in one form or another. This is a lot of ripping if you do it manually. The CD collection is of inconsistent quality, prone to loss, damage, or destruction, and is basically illegal contraband (LOL). But there are solutions to each of these problems.

I think the best move, if you are getting a nice hifi system, would be to either use iTunes Match (as suggested above) or Spotify. You still have to rip your 7000 CDs back into iTunes to use iTunes Match, but once you do, you will enjoy a minimum of 256k quality, you can put the songs on all your (Apple) devices, and you'll have some legal cover, since iTunes Match is, in some ways, an amnesty provision, and some of what you pay goes to the artists. This programme is designed for people like yourself.

Despite that, Spotify Premium is a better choice (though more expensive). It gives you 320k quality, which is really good, you can listen to it on anything, and it gives you fully legal access to not only the stuff on your CDs but just about everything else, too. The best part is that you don't have to rip anything - it's all already there.

So to answer the original question, no, you should not buy a fancy CD player. You should buy a nice DAC. A DAC will make your computer sound like a fancy CD player. You can also, if you have a lot of bootleg or indy CDs that you need to keep, buy a cheap CD player and plug it into the DAC, and it too will sound like a great CD player.

Go for the amp though...that part is easy.

 

[BigH]

Yes spotify is good but does not have everything, some big groups are virtually missing, like Pink Floyd/Led Zepp, it is good for jazz, OK for classical. As for premium which is £9.99 a month, not sure you need that as sound on the ordinary one is pretty good and only £4.99 a month, you get a free 6 month trial for that nad then you can get a free 1 month trial for thye premium, so just try and see.