Cd's to make a come back in the future?

Streaming will eventually kill......I somewhat agree with last poster. I believe SACD and XRCD’s will survive as niche media like LP’s. The XRCD’s are stupendously good....one of my favorites is Dexter Gordon’s A Swingin' Affair. 

Listen to Hotel California cut from Hell Freezes Over XRCD, 

http://ed2.elusivedisc.net/audioclips/jvcxrh8362/06.mp3

Enjoy!

Just like 8 track killed vinyl.

Streaming will eventually kill all hard media. 

But seriously I have been taken aback of late by the sq from my old oppo  bdp80 used as a transport fed into the bnc  input of my Ayon tube dac.

Has me rethinking cd right now.......

Just when you thought it was safe to turn out the light......

Unfortunately bits of the tape tend to get stuck in your teeth......

Tape is a natural medium. It breathes

 But is it organic?.......lol

To me one of the problems facing HD Tracks in addition to high prices, often double the cost of the brand new CD, is that they do not 'keep' your file for you the way iTunes does. If you lose it, it is gone.

I know you back things like this up. And I do. But for real security, especially if you have a lot of money invested in purchased hi-res files you should haveoff site backup. No, its not that hard to do using someone's cloud service but for the premium you pay at HD Tracks you should be able to retrieve files from them. I'm sure there is some legal/market/copyright issue with that.

Of course our hard media (CDs, vinyl, tapes, etc) does not have offsite back up either. Your house burns and they're gone.......but if you've ripped them and are worried about that you could easily store them somewhere else.

I use Tidal, a lossless account, and it’s very good, but, if I find something on Tidal I like enough to want as a physical ‘keeper’, I search it out on eBay for usually very little digital cash (PayPal). Both my streaming and CD Player run through my DAC, and I dunno, to me it sounds better on CD, maybe not, maybe so, but the bottom line is I enjoy having a physical copy of the things I like.

I also rip my CD’s and keep all the rips and downloaded files on a 2TB 2.5” external drive connected to my router, and can access those wirelessly (not Bluetooth, or IMO a degraded USB cable into my DAC) through my DLNA network via my iPhone or iPad. Really, I only use that if I’m feeling very lazy. But it’s a nice back-up to have regardless.

I too was going in the direction of purchasing downloaded music, and also have high capacity USB thumb drives which contained my whole library. I’ve since stopped buying albums on-line, and actually put all my CD’s back into their jewel cases, as for years they were put into cases to use between my car and home, and are now back in their rightful place stored with my system. The car now gets the USB drives, as I do believe playing music via files through the USB sounds better than streaming. In a car.

As also someone who grew up with Vinyl, 8 track, cassettes, and CD’s, there was just an odd feeling only having my music as files. And cannot imagine, at this time, of only having a streaming service as my only music collection, regardless of how good it can sound. And now getting my feet re-wet in vinyl again. And also thinking of where I buried my tape player, as I have a whole box of cassets, and many I of those I don’t have copies on vinyl, CD’s, or files.

Will CD’s make a come back? It’s possible, who knows, but for the time being, I’m glad it isnt, as it makes them so darn cheap to buy as a very good physical media choice if you have a decent DAC. I’m simply amazed how cheap CD’s are right now, used, and the reverse of what happened to the vinyl market when CD first came out. So, I’m stocking up on CD’s right now as there are so many great deals for them as a physical media.

Another + for:
CDs 
CDPs
Cheap used CDs
Hunting for said CDs
Enjoying listening to CDs
Ordering CDs from Amazon
Limiting expenses to a single source- priceless!

I often thought my car cassette system sounded better than my home LP system in many respects. More dynamic, more coherent, much more entertaining. Of course, there are some good reasons why that would be so. Battery power, crossover-less speakers, nearfield listening, seismic isolation provided by shock absorbers. Besides, tape is a natural medium. It breathes.

@n80. I learned the hard way early on what a cheap car player could and would do to a prized tape.....

I found a very good fairly priced player by Panasonic and that was all I ever fitted in my cars for years.
Of course then that darn CD came along and stole the show ,made it very difficult to even buy a new car cassette player.

My roommate in college had a Nakamichi dual tape deck (not the dragon). We were into cassettes in a big way. Saved our money for the highest quality tapes.

I don't have any of them now.

Listened to them in the car a lot and found that car cassette decks were hard on them.

Nice.

But not news to me... lol

Been a huge cassette user and advocate for years.

Never dumped my original stash of tapes and add to the collection on a daily basis.
thrift shops between fifty cents and dollar each.
our lrc does them at $2 each.

A good tape on a good player just sounds so musical.

This interesting article on some musicians' preference for cassettes appeared in my local daily rag today:

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/entertainment/music/article/Hiss-and-tell-Houston-noise-bands-celeb...

Or if you listen whilst having an out of body experience.

There is some good sh1t out there for that kind of experience....so i am told.

n801,164 posts03-01-2019 9:14am" The system will sound a whole lot better in a relatively empty room"

True. And for the serious audiophile just physically being in the room represents a conundrum.

>>>>Not if you’re an empty suit. Or having an out of body experience whilst listening.

I get total satisfaction from the LISTENING TO of the music.
I honestly could not care less its source as long as it is musical and sweet to my ears.
And at the end of the day that is ALL that matters.
I regularly listen to CD, cassette tape, vinyl and streaming.
I do not try and compare any of them to each other, total waste of time.
Just enjoy your music people no matter what the source.

"  The system will sound a whole lot better in a relatively empty room"

True. And for the serious audiophile just physically being in the room represents a conundrum.

Clutter is very bad for the sound. The objective is, in a manner of speaking, to reduce entropy as much as you can. The system will sound a whole lot better in a relatively empty room than a room filled with CDs, LPS, videos, Books, TV, cell phones, iPad, magazines, etc., scout’s honor. ✌️Note media and communications devices especially. 

The point is not a nostalgia road trip or to create some mystical ritual like dropping a needle. Why would that be any more pleasurable than pressing a button or watching a CD tray slide open?

The point is that with a CD you _own_ great sounding media at a literal fraction of the cost of downloadable hi-res media and the component requirement is one decent CDP. Simple. Cheap. Easy and high quality. No other media really ticks those boxes.

"Goodbye clutter"

Well, except for the two drives,cables, wall warts etc. And to me, digital clutter (all things considered) is as bad a physical clutter. And to me a shelf of CDs is no more clutter than books.

What's the point? Digital is digital. While vinyl does sound different, a CD does not sound different from a lossless file. And as far as I know, no one ever got satisfaction from dropping a CD in its tray like they claim from dropping a needle on vinyl.

Dumped my vinyl in '91 with no regrets. Slowly dumping my CD's now. My whole collection now resides on a 512GB flash drive and a 256GB backup. Goodbye clutter.

With the advent of the rising popularity of better and better DACS, we are seeing that even the standard Redbook CD has more information than we once thought. I, like everyone else, gave away my records when the CD came out in the early 80s. Now I'm spinning vinyl again but I'm hanging on to my CDs.  We live in a time where convenience rules.  Thus, the CD has a lot of convenience options and hey, DACs are still improving. I won't make the same mistake twice. I'm keeping both formats: CDs and vinyl LPs.

My local cd/vinyl shop sells both new and used Items. Cd's are from $10 up and vinyl probably $25+.

Todays Thrift store visit yielded 19 cd's for $19.
here are a few that are in the 19;
Marianne Faithful- Perfect Stranger-The Anthology 2 discs.Looks new
Diana Krall-Quiet nights
Steely Dan-Two against nature
Stone Temple Pilots-Core
Foo Fighters-The Colour and Shape
System of a Down-Toxicity
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
Cleo Laine- The very best of 2 discs.
Incubus- S.c.i.e.n.c.e

The rest are classical
Bargain!

I think there is another element here. To the aspiring audiophile DACs, cables, transports, streamers,jitter  etc etc, especially the high dollar stuff, can be off-putting both in their complexity and cost but also in the wide range of opinions in regard to how to go about streaming, server set up and all that.

If I were to advise someone interested in dabbling in high end audio I would recommend starting with a good CD player and CDs. Simple. Relatively cheap. This will allow them to hear high end and get their feer wet and without someone telling them that SQ is awful through anything but a $10,000 DAC with $500 USB cables. From there they can get into servers, streaming, jitter management devices etc. as their interest level and SQ tastes dictate.

In other words, CDs are the cheapest, easiest way to get into hi-fi.

And not to beat a dead horse but for the frugal audiophile (an oxymoron if there ever was one) if you do the leg work you can get an extremely well engineered CD, e.g. Two Against Nature by Steely Dan (my reference CD) for $5. Hi res files are $15 and up and require a back-up strategy.

I think Darko's point was that with DAC technology advancing-- that a CD transport and an external DAC-- makes the sound quality, in many cases, sound better than the HiRes download.  So why pony up for a HiRes download of a CD that you already own, when in fact the CD might sound as good as the supposed HiRes download.  And ripping a CD and then using a great DAC can make the sound quality better than the CD.  So again, I think his point is, keep the CD collection.

My CD/SACD collection continues to grow, have never looked back

I can’t imagine CD’s coming back. With Vinyl there is the analog “warmth” e.g. dust and crackle ;-) and process of cleaning and caring for the vinyl and turntable to feel nostalgic about. CD’s are about the digital reproduction of studio music sessions to get the best copy possible for playback in digital form. Tidal provides this level of reproduction for a monthly fee and other music download sites provide a better than CD digital copy for purchase. There are at least 5 sites that allow purchase of DSD and FLAC music that is currently the best reproduction of music available anywhere. For me, streaming is best for day to day music listening due to selection and introduction to new music and DSD/FLAC for best possible format critical listening sessions for beloved songs and artists. 

I said:

"Even low end CDPs sound good and can be used as transports."  

@inna said:

"No way, totally wrong. Besides, transport is at least as important as dac, some people don't know it."

No, not wrong at all. As inexperienced as I am I have had the opportunity to listen to some good CDPs, some fair CDPs and some $14 CDPs. The $14 CDPs sound 'good'. Not as good, not fantastic, but certainly not off-putting or awful and the differences are often subtle.

We could argue all day about what 'good' means, but that was not really the point. The point is that in comparison with the other popular physical medium, vinyl, you don't have to spend tons of money to exploit the basic value of the media. In a recent vinyl thread a member was told that he might as well not even think about vinyl unless he's willing to spend a grand or more and to not even bother with a $350 TT.

A $350 CDP will do a reasonable job whereas conventional wisdom is that a $350 TT will not.

I do not think I could ever or would even like to entertain the idea of just playing vinyl or just playing cd or just streaming.

Sorry but I want the whole 9 yards and mostly have it.

Only thing missing right now is a r2r unit and I am sure the itch will make me buy one sooner or later.

One experiment I am going to try this morning is to record a 24/96 stream to my Nak cassette deck and see how it sounds on playback.

I explore new music on youtube, old unreleased music too.

The good thing is that we don't have to select only one or two formats.  We can enjoy each of them for their best qualities. 

What I like about streaming is the access to all that music for $20 a month.  Every Friday morning all the new releases are on my tablet.  I can try any album before I buy it and listen to stuff I might want to hear once or twice but don't want to own.  If you're reading about some music you can pull it up and give it a listen with a couple of taps.  I love it and I'm keeping my Cds, Lps, cassette tapes, etc. too.  

2. Sometimes records are just as inexpensive and sometimes they are very expensive
3. Not everything can be found on cds but a lot.
5. No way, totally wrong. Besides, transport is at least as important as dac, some people don't know it.

I agree that CDs are unlikely to generate any nostalgia.  I was among that generation who experienced vinyl, eight track, cassette and then CD. And while nostalgia is often cited as an appeal toward vinyl, nostalgia really doesn't draw me to any media.

For me the appeal of CDs is as follows:

1. Real media that I own even if I cancel a streaming account.
2. Inexpensive. The least expensive medium you can own.
3. Extensive selection and availability.
4. Easy to find components to play them.
5. Even low end CDPs sound good and can be used as transports.
6. Can be ripped for all the convenience of streaming.
7. You can dive in deep with CDs with little risk. In other words, you can buy a lot of them for little money, get a good CDP, a great DAC and rip them all onto a HD. And if you decided to be done with CDs tomorrow you're out the cost of the CDP and the CDs. The rest you can still use.

There used to be a member here from Munich, Germany, with five or so Studer open reel decks in perfect condition, and he said he played them all. There was a picture of his listening room - very impressive.
As for cds, first of all it is unknown how long they last. And then - come back probably not but many will keep them even if for the only reason that they own them and they rarely break. With computers you own really nothing let alone this streaming thing. Computers break often, they don't last, back-up hard drives break too. It is all unreliable junk.

Aiwa 660, 770, & 990 here lol.....and a nak bx100 just to say I own a nak...long live the cassette!  My marantz sa8005 sounds pretty darn fine to me, whether I'm playing red book or sacd....got the compact marantz hdcd1 as a back up, plus it looks neat with the wood side panels....working on a deal for an audiolab cdt transport to combine it with the 6000a integrated....i also own three turntables, pro- ject, thorens, and a music hall mmf7....and tons of lp's that I play daily...yea....I love my physical media....hahaha....no streaming for me...

There’s much to be said for a good cassette deck. I’ve been extremely happy with my Sony TCK-570 3 head deck and my Technics RS-M234X with dbx. Naturally that is a medium that very few would allow themselves to enjoy today. 

+1 "Great to be finding such low prices on so many CDs"  

Great to be finding such low prices on so many CDs

@uberwaltz,

LOL!!!! Next up for donation is my stack of 400 plus CD’s to Goodwill. Most of the listening nowadays is Tidal/Qobuz and my premium stack of SACD’s /  XRCD’s. 

There is a Pioneer Stereo cassette deck CT-F900 near me for $160 ..........hmmm.
I need a justifiable reason.. coz two cassette decks is not enough? three is my lucky number? 

I moved a few years ago from the East Coast to the SW USA. I downsized my CD collection from a couple thousand to about 600 "keepers" I never listen to a straight CD anymore although I have an Oppo transport. All those CD's were ripped to a hard drive with triple backups. I agree with Uberwaltz, the CD doesn't have the palpability of an LP (I don't listen to LPs anymore). So I stream Tidal and tap my hard drive library.

Lalitk.
Think you dumped the wrong medium. Lol.

My Nak 582 gets a workout every couple days, today it had Siamese Dreams playing through it.
$2395 is somewhat steep but maybe it is just right for someone.

I could be that nut and I would win, but for the price and much less I will take Otari two track any moment. Top of the line Nakamichi 1000 ZXL in perfect condition costs more that $2395 and 1000 ZXL Limited much more if you can find it. A few Tandbergs are also very expensive. Open reel decks are not for everyone for various reasons but anyone can be in agreement with cassettes. Some people also have high end Nakamichi cassette players in their cars, so they can make analog recording from records and reels, and record from cds too. Great cassette deck is a valuable stuff. I use one at home almost daily.

“Nakamichi cassette deck for $2395”. 

I left my stash of 200 cassettes and Technics dual tape deck outside my apartment dumpster about 17 years ago. I was moving out and didn’t want to lug around tapes and CD’s. 

Not sure there will be much, or any fisticuffs over the Nak at that price. No matter how good it is. The buyer will have to be a real tape 'nut' to purchase that. 

Tape is a natural medium. It breathes. I’ll take my $3 Sony Walkman Cassette Player and let folks fight over the Nakamichi.

What about cassettes? there is a Nakamichi cassette deck on here for $2395. Wow.......

there are at least a few decades left of many music listeners who will never do streaming or computer audio...