Old CDs and records

@elmo2

So 16,000 disks. You are a collector. If you play one a day… it would take 43 years to listen to them all. How old are you? When I was working my average was 6 per week. Now that I am retired it is maybe 10 per week.

I did this calculation when about when I was 65 and realized I would be lucky to listen all my albums in during the rest of my life. I think at some point it really is a lot more about collecting than listening. But it is way better than collecting door knobs or stamps, you can do something with them. Nothing wrong with collecting.

@rok2id

We are in transition… so not surprising there are various takes on the current situation. The hierarchy used to be really simple, vinyl was simply the best by a long ways at nearly all price levels, then came CD, and finally streaming. Things have radically changed.

I have a good contemporary system and for the last couple years: streaming is generally superior to vinyl which is superior to CDs and playing of std Rez files. Since streaming (Qobuz) has 1/2 million high resolution albums… this means most of the time streaming is best. If the same files are being streamed as are on a CD… then it will sound the same.

So, what does this mean? Streaming and vinyl are “superior” as they can sound better up to the level of investment you are willing to make in your audio system. Vinyl can best streaming with the appropriate investment, or visa versa.

Vinyl still has an edge: large in the <$10 - $15K system range. But that edge becomes smaller as your system gets better. The thing that kills CDs is their restricted resolution and cost (space and $). For the price of one new CD per month you get access to nearly all music. Once you have that… there is no going back… unless for reasons of nostalgia you like fiddling with disks.

The ambiguity occurs because many folks here have varied levels of equipment, experience and skill. So someone may have a particularly great CP Player and thinks it blows away everything else, some may have terrible DACs… there are so many ways not to get the very best sound that it covers up the underlying differences in the media… the current high Rez formats are streaming and vinyl and the long run winner will be streaming.

Yep, true.

I just gave away about 700 to an aspiring audiophile who doesn’t yet have a complete system. They are worthless. I still have 1,500 in racks that are working as diffusers. I haven’t played one in six months or a year.

My streamer sounds the same and usually better… on the 500,000 high resolution albums available on Qobuz. The age of the CD is over for audiophiles. I just upgraded my vinyl system. It sounds the same as my streamer… occationally slightly more detailed… but not really obvious. I’m an old fart, so I kind of like vinyl sometimes for the nostalgia.