Rip the CD's that aren't available to stream or the CD version that sounds better to you than the streamed version.
I wish I had back all the time I spent ripping, tagging, and organizing my CD collection. I subscribed to Tidal a few months after I finished. I estimate I haven't listened to 75% of those titles since I can easily queue them up and stream them.
I still buy the occasional CD that is unavailable to stream. Spent quite a bit on ECM label titles before that library became available to stream. Live and learn I guess.
Good luck. |
I truly enjoy going to my rack of CDs and letting my eyes roam. I'll pull out a likely suspect. Maybe I'll put it back and pull one out that's nearby. It's a process that, woah, is just like choosing a slice of vinyl. In any case, it's far more fun for me than squinting at my laptop or cell phone.
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As long as you don't mind the $20 per month for the rest of your life, stick with hi-res streaming. |
What if something happen to your CD collection? Theft, flood? You said some are from your band so I assume irreplaceable.
The convenience. From a computer you can sit in your Lazyboy, browse and play the music you want. All my CDs are on my computer which is connected to my tv. The computer runs Plex so I can sit and browse all my music, it gives me info about the album, bands. If I want to look at the CD case I go to my CD rack.
Will |
Streaming can be great when it works well, frustrating when it doesn't. I am starting to sound like a broken record (remember those?) but remember that streamers are computers, masquerading as audio products, and if you have ever had IT issues elsewhere at work or home, they definitely can happen here. I understand the FOMO anxiety but the important thing is the music. If you have a small number of CDs, such as those bands that you mentioned, then it may not be worth the expense and potential aggravation. What might be worthwhile and keep you in the list of doing what the cool kids do is bluetooth. The latest bluetooth codecs are in improvement if not the equal of other digital formats but you can keep those few albums on your phone and then play them without having to retrieve the CD, or while you are visiting an old friend, etc
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IT issues more so when it comes to wireless, using DACs, USB cables. I have all physical connections, hdmi from my pc/music server to my pre, ethernet to my Oppo and pre if I want to use DLNA. Simple, I never have issues.
I avoid most things wireless especially streaming, then you are subject to internet speed, loss of signal or interference, etc.
I don't use USB cables because then you have drivers in the mix to deal with. But still I might, I have thought about trying a external DAC to see how much an improvement it could make. |
no romance pegged it.
Just rip the rare stuff and listen to it plugged into your streamer. Unless you have SGC crap. |
Re: getting rid of your CDs. Well, my portable hard drive died a couple days ago. I took it to a local computer fix-it joint to get it running again or, alternatively, to extract the files and put them in a new one. I've got both fingers & toes crossed. Lots of old pictures. Live recordings of me and my friends playing music. Fires? Floods? How about the vicissitudes of 21st Century electronic gizmos? BTW, I had Qobuz merrily playing on the stereo as I was writing this note. Moments ago, Stravinsky was replaced with silence. Gimme physical media, please!
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I know two things from that comment; your portable drive had a traditional drive with spinning platters, and you don't backup the portable drive.
Hopefully your computer place is good and the failure is the interface, some form of read/write disk error, or similar.
Did you keep your CDs?
Think positive I.T. thoughts. |
Thanks for all the comments folks! Much appreciated. Certainly never intend on tossing the CD's, and still have a CD player for an occasional turn. It was more of a - should I create a server library or not. I think the idea of keeping it small, to just the unique albums/songs that can't be had on my streaming services does make the most sense for me. Again - appreciate the discussion! |
edcyn/OT:
Our iMac "completely" failed in 2017 (nothing retrievable per Apple).
We replaced it with another/like iMac (the old one was 7 years old).
Approx. one year ago my wife was able to retrieve all of our lost photos, documents et cetera, when she accidentally discovered that they had been stored in The Cloud (think she was doing something on FaceBook @ the time).
Not a computer person, but glad my wife eventually figured it out (and pissed that Apple didn’t bother to advise/look).
DeKay |
Fade,
Good for you. Definitely the ones you cannot stream or replace, after that who knows once you have those done you might find you enjoy being able to browse and play and decide to rip them all.
Keeping your CDs will be your first backup, then make sure the computer or whatever you put the CDs on is backed up to an external drive. Or two.
Will |
