Going back to CD a good idea? hmm

[chebby]

Kids are happy to listen to there mobiles, laptops and other devices via tinny speakers and think nothing of it

Simply because thats whats popular, does not mean it is superior

Is that the only way to do it then? (Via 'tinny speakers'.)

Would I get away with generalising about CD users in a similar way? How about ...

"Housewives are happy to listen to cheap compilation disks on their £29.99 Tesco CD/radio kitchen portables or their crappy Halfords car audios and think nothing of it."

Both generalisations (your real one and my made up one) are a bit true and both are contradicted by a spectrum of users, of all ages, using kit that varies between the tacky and the professional.

 

[BigH]

Kids are happy to listen to there mobiles, laptops and other devices via tinny speakers and think nothing of it. Simply because thats whats popular, does not mean it is superior.

Not sure thats true, why have sales of decent headphones soared? And better does mean it will sell more. I think the music industry will want to kill off cds and either have downloads and Blu-Ray audio/vinyl.

 

[Macspur]

Kids are happy to listen to there mobiles, laptops and other devices via tinny speakers and think nothing of it. Simply because thats whats popular, does not mean it is superior.

Not sure thats true, why have sales of decent headphones soared? And better does mean it will sell more. I think the music industry will want to kill off cds and either have downloads and Blu-Ray audio/vinyl.

Vynal... a great format and experiencing somewhat of a revival, but at 3 times the price of a CD, why does it have more chance of survival than the silver disc?

 

[BigH]

Vynal... a great format and experiencing somewhat of a revival, but at 3 times the price of a CD, why does it have more chance of survival than the silver disc?

Well its survived so far and as you say its more popular now than a few years ago, even I who has not bought vinyl for 30 years am considering going back to it for certain albums. As for records companies I presume its good because as you say it costs us x3 the price, I think they will want everyone to switch to Blu-Ray Audio or high res. downloads, nothing like selling the same music many times over.

One advantage that BD audio may have is you can get about 8 albums on one disc.

 

[josh05]

I will always buy CD's and vinyl while i can, you get the best of both worlds, a physical copy and a digital one if your willing to rip them, and as mentioned above there are some really good older masters out there on CD and vinyl which arent available to download (Barry Diament Led Zep masters absolutely destroy the newer remasters ). At the moment i only use my rips when listening at my PC with headphones because i'm yet to get a streamer, once i eventually setup a NAS and get a streamer the only thinkg I'll be using my CD's for is ripping to the PC, that way my CD's will stay in awesome condition and ill always have them as a backup.

 

[ukridge]

BD Audio (like SACD) has the 'advantage' of surround sound mixes also if you want to get into that.

As for CDs and files, although I use both methods, I think there is something to be said for physical cataloguing and 'physical browsing' with the physical blocking you can do with CDs. It's nice to have a small set of favourites staring down at you from their cases' spines on a shelf. With lots of CDs some like the physical but more physical-space saving method of using large wallet case storage, and get rid of the plastic cases they came with. Smaller but less thin media cards and USB sticks would have been an interesting distribution method for physical cataloguing, but again I think there is something to be said for a CD's flat thin shape with a nice area for sizeable labels and artwork to notice.

There's also something to be said for the physical feeding/involvement mechanism and also the way a music block (e.g. an album, and that album only) is set as a limitation of the amount of music listened to. In all three cases these physical things are done to some extent, but CDs sit much closer to the physical involvement of vinyl than files.

 

[Al ears]

What about the new Blu-Ray Audio format?

So long as the producers insist on implementations that require a screen, the worst of all worlds, since you have the selection overhead *and* no ripping option

Pretty sure that Blu Ray audio has specifically been designed so that you can play them without having to have the screen on.

Blu ray audio discs do indeed not require a screen.

I stream files through my Oppo which does require a screen to do so.

However I would not ditch my CD player as, although that function can be performed by the Oppo, I find my CD player to be of better quality. The Oppo is reserved for SACD / DVD playback.

That maybe so but but your cdp costs £2,000? and how much is the DAC? So that hardly surprising, if you only had the Oppo would you buy a £500 cdp?

Not too sure where you get the figures from but I did not pay anything like that amount for the CDP and DAC combined. I do not think they are made any more.

The answer to your question is probably not unless the £500 CD player was significantly better than the Oppo.

 

[TrevC]

This thread is puzzling. Why not have all formats?

 

[BigH]

Not too sure where you get the figures from but I did not pay anything like that amount for the CDP and DAC combined. I do not think they are made any more.

The answer to your question is probably not unless the £500 CD player was significantly better than the Oppo.

I could not find much apart from a US review which had the cdp as $2,500.

 

[andyjm]

This thread is puzzling. Why not have all formats?

Lets suppose you were running a music distribution company. Would you:

a: Support all formats, regardless of the number of unit sales and profitability, or

b: Focus on the format which had the highest sales and/or generated the highest levels ot profitability

?

 

[BigH]

The problem for us is that most people are not bothered about sound quality, they are happy to buy low res. mp3, the companies are happy to sell that as its cheap for them and they charge around £0.70 a track which compared to many cds is expensive, also there is no used market. The Blu-Ray Audio format is quite interesting as its higher qualityand higher capacity but is about mp3 price, in fact album like the Stones GRRR with 50 tracks is cheaper at £9.99.

 

[MakkaPakka]

Not everyone is tech-literate but just about everyone has a CD player and can pick up CDs in a supermarket.

 

[BigH]

Not everyone is tech-literate but just about everyone has a CD player and can pick up CDs in a supermarket.

You can at the moment but they don't sell anything I want to buy.

 

[cse]

"Housewives are happy to listen to cheap compilation disks on their £29.99 Tesco CD/radio kitchen portables or their crappy Halfords car audios and think nothing of it."

I do think that there is alot of truth in this statement though. How many people on on this forum are housewives?

 

[MakkaPakka]

You can at the moment but they don't sell anything I want to buy.

As long as there's a decent volume of CDs being sold then there's going to be factories around to make them. The format won't die for many years.

 

[busb]

I sold my DAC and burn all my files into CDs also I have hundreds of original CDs . the sound is much better through my ROTEL 1520 CDP .

I think DACs in general have a negative effect on the sound especially on Classical , Jazz and unplug music .

So how does your CDP convert digital to analogue to avoid having one of them nasty DACs inside it then?

 

[josh05]

I sold my DAC and burn all my files into CDs also I have hundreds of original CDs . the sound is much better through my ROTEL 1520 CDP .

I think DACs in general have a negative effect on the sound especially on Classical , Jazz and unplug music .

What was your transport into the DAC? Bad transports cause jitter. I had this problem when i had my PC connected to my DAC, the sound was confused and un focused i guess you could say compared to my CDP. I'm not using my PC now but when i was i ended up getting a higher quality power supply and it improved things heaps, Jriver media center in wasapi output > coaxial to DAC sounded as good or maybe better than my CDP through the DAC.

 

[utomo]

in my opinion if your setup is only PC or simple audio (not high end) it is better you keep using the digital files instead of CDs

easier to find and organize, and you will not feel the different quality

 

[ID.]

If I were buying my kit again I think I'd avoid a CDP. Spend my money on a DAC and a higher spec. amp or DAC/preamp into active speakers.

At the time I was interested in being able to play SACDs too. I'd still buy CDs but just rip them, get rid of the boxes and store them in sleeves.

 

[ISAC69]

My Rotel RCD-1520 has an excellent internal DAC so I realy don't need a DAC I burn all my files on CD's ( It took a long time to do it ! ) and the sound is great . I do think that I can achieve a good quality sound with a DAC but for that I need a good source with a low THD ( total harmonic distortion) , a very good DAC ( and expensive one ! ) , good quality interconnects between the source to the DAC and between the DAC to the amp

and to find good digital files ... Isn't it more simple to hook up a CD to my CDP and press PLAY ?

 

[James7]

Interesting thread. Personally I don't enjoy sitting at a computer but do like the tangible feel of loading up a disc. I did begin the process of ripping my CDs but got bored and anyway my computer and back up hard drive both then crashed at the sam time. So a few months ago I bougyt myself a new disc spinner, one that plays SACDs so I can still get my hi res kicks (listening to a lot of classical means a vast amount of SACD material is out there for me) and also has a USB input so if I ever do go back to listening from a computer I can make the most of it. I do have a Squeezebox Touch plgged in though, which I use for internet radio and spotify - all the joy of finding what I want from the comfort of my ipad without any of the hassle of NAS devices and ethernet snaking round the house and having to read about the best ripping software ... Each to their own of course but I am in a good place I feel.

 

[chebby]

I sold my DAC and burn all my files into CDs also I have hundreds of original CDs . the sound is much better through my ROTEL 1520 CDP .

I think DACs in general have a negative effect on the sound especially on Classical , Jazz and unplug music .

So how does your CDP convert digital to analogue to avoid having one of them nasty DACs inside it then?

An inconvenient truth.

I remember a few years ago I challenged a vociferous "CD vs digital" adherent on this matter but the guy couldn't get it into his head that CD was digital too.

He was so wrapped up in 'tangible', 'warm', 'smooth', 'sleeve notes' and things like the ritual of playing a CD and the 'physicality' of the disk format that pointing out the digital nature of his chosen format (and the DAC in his player) was responded to as if it were an insult.

I call it 'digital denial'.

 

[manicm]

Well Naim were until recently in 'digital denial' for decades, believing the transport should be as close as possible to the DAC. Their Naim DAC was their very first standalone DAC wasn't it??

 

[Supreme]

At least with CD you get to own the music in a tangible format. If one day Spotify goes pop you are left with nothing.

also....could someone tell me how I could stream music from YouTube through my system without using a pc/laptop. Is there something out there that will do this? Sonos?

 

[peterpan]

More and more artists brings their album on vinyl. Why? Because it is the best sounding! Forget CD!