Why Do ~You~ Still Play CDs?

I'm old guy who grew up on CD, vinyl, cassette tape, 8 track and reel-to-reel.  When CD arrived, I found myself using my turn table less and less, so, eventually, I got rid of it (and everything else), and stuck with playing CD exclusively.  Why, because CD sounded so wonderful, and I no longer had to deal with the hassles of  owning a turn table.  When streaming music advanced to the point where it's sound quality rose to the level of CD quality and beyond, I found myself using my CD player less and less, so, eventually, I got rid of my CD player, for the same reasons that I gave up vinyl for CD.  And, I've never been happier!!!  Happy listening.       

Thanks again to everyone who has responded. So much goodness here! 

Lalitk maybe your streaming set up is excellent compare to your sacd or cd set up. In this case streaming will be better.iam only speculating.

I have a friend who told me the same thing cd sounds better than streaming. I ask him why ? He said too much upsampling on the streaming because of that the music no longer sound natural. I don’t know if this true?

@jayctoy  That’s just bogus and your friend has no idea what he’s talking about.  If your streaming doesn’t sound as good as CDs it’s because there’s something in your streaming setup holding you back.  It’s well worth the effort to find out what that is and fix it. 

It’s hard to compare cds and streaming because of variables on every set up. Let say I brought my SA10 to my friend house . Obviously his streamer is already matching his system, my player will need acclimation time to perform its best.The the price between the sa10 and the streaming set up. Because of this the argument will not end. On my end I heard good streaming set up as well cd players set up.Both set up are good if done right.

I still enjoy listening to CDs because I still collect them. However, I'm more selective in what I buy in vinyl or CD format for my music collection these days and focus on specific artists rather than genres or simply collecting a vast amount of physical music formats.

I have CDs that aren't available on streaming platforms and the SQ, as others have mentioned, tends to be better on CD than streaming. I enjoy looking at the album art and the value to $ ratio tends to be better than vinyl in many cases. There are also some artists that I listen to that have CD-only releases as well. 

I bought a mid-fi CD transport a few years ago after having been digital-only for years and rediscovered stuff in my CD collection that I hadn't listened to in ages. CDs I didn't really want anymore I re-ripped as FLAC for my digital library and I plan to trade those in at a local store for credit so I can buy more music.

The better my system gets, the better Redbook CDs sound... 

Having watch the development of the digital-sound market for 15+ years, I prefer the relative simplicity and SQ of CDs and LPs.  

Compared to streaming, CDs tend to have equal or better SQ, are less complicated, are more reliable, and have no monthly fee attached.

While not on par with high-SQ LPs, CDs can sound great (ex. Sam Sklair's Virgo on VTL).  Moreover, I find a Class-A CD player much preferable to the 4, 5, or 6 boxes that most HiFi streaming systems employ. 

Finally, each week multiple AG members initiate threads asking for help with their unreliable content-provider(s) or streaming gear - which keeps me playing CDs!

I do stream but I still like the tube sound of cd. Primaluna  and old carver sda 490t rebuilt by rowland, bat vk 5sd,shanling cdt100,but my favorite mcintosh mcd12000.it is a time and place in life of hard work paying off the journey of thrift stores to find  a cd and the mesolimbic system of the brain and chemicals it sends out.enjoy the music and life.stay healthy

Thank you @soix! That's what I'm hoping my Hermes will do. I have about ~20 hrs of play time on Hermes so I haven't sat down for a critical audition to see the difference. Ran into my slight noise/distortion issue which I am dealing with as you know...But I'm going to let her play all day tomorrow and then sit down tomorrow night hoping to hear the difference (with no distortion on certain tracks). I'm hoping bypassing Symphony with USB direct to Hermes will do the trick as I only noticed the distortion on certain tracks while streaming...

That said I will always LOVE my CD's...

“cds sound better than streaming”

That statement has little to no merits. So many variables one must take into account…is it due to medium itself or playback equipment or laziness on someone’s part to setup a good streaming system.

Even an identical album would sound different through Vinyl and CD’s, then why consistently ding Streaming. The only knock on Streaming should be the ‘unknown provenance’ of recording being streamed and secondly, artists are not being compensated appropriately, IMHO.

Streaming, when done right, can indeed rival or even surpass physical media. I listen to CD’s, Streaming and Vinyl. You’re welcome to bring your best SACD/CD’s for a chance to hear how good streaming can sound :-)

Listening to music at home on a great system is a wonderful experience.  But it is still a substitute for a live performance where all the musicians are sharing same space with you..  Physical media does provide a gradient where you do have something in between the live performance and enjoying the presence of music at home -- a tangible element to hold in your hand(s) that represents a reasonable facsimile of the actual performance.  While an electron microscope won't let you see all the musicians that performed on the CD, the CD does allow to you physically attach yourself to musical genius, a piece of cultural history, or something that fully resonates with you.  Or, perhaps those you shared the experience with who are no longer with you?  Liner notes elevate the emotional attachment to this phenomenon even further.

Life is full of successes and failures.  A broad CD (or vinyl) collection validates the good decisions you've made in life.  Their mere presence at this time is a validation of the good choices you've made along the way.  Things have come and gone, but those CDs are still there, ready to bring you pleasure on demand in a moment's notice.

And, finally, each CD in the collection represents a chuck of your life where there you were, standing over that CD bin looking for that target CD, or just shopping to find that hidden gem that would be special to you -- even if it's not on the Top Albums list of <fill in the year here>.  Standing at a distance and glancing at your CD collection (displayed in your storage system of choice) is not just looking at your CD collection.  It's a view of your life.

Yes, streaming gets you from 0-60 quicker.  But, as they say:  "It's not the destination.  It's the journey."

Got tired of ticks, pops, warps, SRA, VTA, protractor, alignment, anti-skating, force, cleaning, no remote, getting up to turn over record...

Sold my last turntable after I bought my first CDP and have been a happy camper ever since.

I now exclusively stream music. Here are some comments on why and some responses to other opinions.

If your CD player sounds better than streamed music it’s probably because you have not optimized your streaming set up. If you are still using a computer as your source, even into an external Dac, I am not surpised to hear that your CD player sounds better. Get a good dedicated streamer and you will likely change your mind.

The argument that streaming is more expensive is not my experience. I pay way less money yearly for my Tidal subscription than I spent yearly on CDs.

Streaming easily allows for listening to my favourite music with easy portability. I don’t need to drag physical media between my systems and when I travel my phone, portable DAC, and planar headphones provide a vastly better experience than in the days of portable CD players.

Lastly, my music listening time is precious, my sound systems are quite decent and revealing. A recording is only as good as the skills of the recording engineer and mastering engineer and a reflection of what they and the artist treid to achieve.

A lot of great music is poorly recorded. If I want to listen to an artist that has a large body of work, with streaming, I can favourite albums that are satisfying both musically and sonically, granted this applies more to jazz and classical where catalogs can be large compared to other genres.

For example, live Greatful Dead, Joe Pass, or Beeethovens 5th.....many many choices , Imagine Dragons Night Visions, only one poorly recorded one.

Of course good music badly engineered is always better than bad music perfectly engineered. With streaming I can have it all, here, there, and everywhere.

I ripped every CD I own to my Bluesound Vault. I packed the Cd's in a box and they now live in my attic. I still purchase Cd's, some stuff you have to own...and I just can't get past the habit. I have Spotify and qobuz for streaming also. Doing my research on a vinyl setup. Have to get a VPI Scout II - I went to Virginia Tech (VPI) and I own a Scout II, so there is that. I will build my Phono stage pre-amp from a tube kit, up in the air for tone arm and cartridge. Heard the new MM cartridges and they sound great, need to figure this out before building the Phono stage so I can tweak it for the cartridge. As you can tell, I'm all over the place with this right now. I'd even be into getting some reel to reel.

I have a friend who told me the same thing cd sounds better than streaming. I ask him why ? He said too much upsampling on the streaming because of that the music no longer sound natural. I don’t know if this true?Actually his step son in law came to visit Him from out of state.He bought many cds because he said cds sound better than streaming on the systems he heard.

CD's sound better than streamers in my experience, but streamers are far more convenient.

Big_greg +1 , you are right on the money. So many great SAcds.

Soix I agree $11 is cheap but you still have to buy streamer dac and cables. Though my marantz sa10 can be use on streaming.Again Iam very happy streaming is available.its shows many here play cds because they have good collections and good cd players and dac /transport set up.

I'm a "vinyl guy", but used CDs are cheap and plentiful and nearly indestructible.  Once I have them, I make a backup copy to my network, making it easy to stream them.  They are more convenient than vinyl, you can pause them, skip tracks, etc.  They take up a lot less space than vinyl. 

And I have an excellent CD playback system.  Actually two now, I recently bought a converter to send the audio from my Oppo HDMI out to the i2s input of my Rockna Signature Wavedream DAC.  The Rockna Wavedream NET server also provides excellent CD playback, but it only does Redbook.  The converter lets me play the DSD layer of SACDs from the Oppo through the Rockna DAC.  Some of the SACDs are really great.

@soix im not sure i fully buy the noise argument. Along those same lines, what about noise from signal transmission within servers at Tidal, transmission to my house etc? The McIntosh CD transport is the shortest and least tampered-with signal IMO. I’ve heard plenty of streamers including on my own speakers (Wilson Audio) at the dealer and to my ears, it’s inferior to CD and vinyl.

Not because of better sound quality, but my CD collection includes content that Qobuz does not. Unless you have a high-quality CD/DVD drive, economical digital transporters like the MXN10 can easily outperform it.

• I buy physical media because streaming screws over the artists and only lines the wallets of the streaming companies.
• I buy physical formats because I like to own something, and also appreciate the physical design. If available, I get the special physical edition, signed covers, etc.
• I buy CDs if the work is not available on vinyl.
• I buy cassettes if that is the only physical format.
• I buy files if that is the only format.
• All CDs are digitized and on a Roon server.
• I have a few records, including some new pop/rock, that are not available on streaming (e.g., Videotraum's "Ebbe//Flut"). I don't want to be limited to what I listen by what is available on a streaming platform.

I still play CD's because the better quality ones still sound great.  Of course you need a first rate CD player to get the most out of them and that can be costly.  

Nothing beats streaming for convenience and its sound quality continues to improve. I do wonder given the fast pace of technology how long it will be before streaming is replaced.  

I run my cd player into my streamer dac. It improves the sound a bit. Plus the coax output makes a difference rather than using the rca output 

I still play CD's because a lot of things I like are not available on vinyl. I also buy large CD box sets like those of the Grateful Dead. 

However, I still find CD’s to have a bit more depth, detail, and just a tiny bit extra level of air

@kingbr  If you add an Iris or Hermes DDC before your Pontus and take advantage of the i2S connection it will up your streaming performance significantly and may surpass CDs.  That’s what it did for me anyway — it’s not a small improvement and on the level of a significant DAC upgrade.  Just my experience FWIW. 
 

I personally find that my CD's sound better than the exact album on Tidal streamed directly through a high-end computer into the same DAC as the CD player.

@upstateaudiophile  Of course CDs will sound better than streaming through a computer, which is the noisiest and worst source for streaming.   Even a cheap streamer like a Node or iFi Zen Stream will put your streaming much closer in performance to CDs.

@loomisjohnson 

very well said 

-Because-I-Enjoy-Them

I personally find that my CD's sound better than the exact album on Tidal streamed directly through a high-end computer into the same DAC as the CD player. I also spend too much time in front of screens and computers for work, so it is nice to keep that out of my listening room. I like owning the album and the tactile nature of a CD. 

All my CDs fall into a few categories.

1. CD came with the record.
2. Album not available on vinyl and I need a copy.
3. Album not available on vinyl and bought to support the artist.

I like CDs but prefer the sound of records. Tried streaming Tidal Hi-Fi and didn't like sound at all. Not willing to invest in better digital gear. I do listen to a lot of YouTube on Firefox with Ublock Origin for ad free viewing. 

I don't stream, and haven't listened to any of the hundreds of digital downloads I purchased a decade (or two?) ago in, well, about a decade.  I like the experience of selecting physical media (LP, CD or whatever), and I've got more to listen to than I can handle in the few years I've got left.

I just got into streaming less than 1 year ago. Whilst I held out for many reasons (large CD collection that I own, couldn’t wrap my brain around “renting” music), I can honestly say I love it! Almost life changing😂! However, I still find CD’s to have a bit more depth, detail, and just a tiny bit extra level of air. I also find CD listening to sound a bit more dry-in a good way…

Streaming I so enjoy as I find it to sound livelier and more encompassing. I find myself more involved when listening to a song streaming vs CD. I find myself letting loose on Friday and I got the streamer going whereas if I want a more quiet/intimate listening session I go with CD..

 I stream and I still purchase CDs.  I agree with your reasons why.  Most of the new ones I buy are reissued box sets that have tracks I can’t get online like live shows that are unreleased.  I still have over a thousand CDs but I find I don’t play them as often due to the ease of use and sound quality with a good streaming system.  I listen to so much more new music streaming.  Interesting to explore new music. It’s good for this old dog to listen to new tracks.  

Not played CDs directly since 2007. Rarely even rip one these days.

I don’t.  I have not had a working CD player for 6 years.  Another customer service nightmare when the laser burned out on my Linn Unidisk 1.1 without Linn supporting disc players any more and using a custom laser.  I find streaming equivalent or better than analog and CD/SACD.  I  do not get added enjoyment from, or need the tactile feel of physical media and consider it an inconvenience.  I do not need to own physical media and recognize streaming is a bargain from the customer’s perspective as business model where thousands of albums available at my fingertips for the monthly charge rather than buying physical content.  The only negative is it is a little more enjoyable to read a vinyl album cover rather thanmetadata on a screen, but reading metadata on a screen is more enjoyable than a CD insert.  

I don't have a streamer and don't spend enough time listening (unfortunately) to justify buying one but still have lots of cds to listen to when I can. 

I don't want any more bills (like for  a streaming service) to add to my budget in retirement., not that I couldn't afford  it.  I also find it greatly satisfying to have complete collections of an artists output on vinyl or CD. It's one of life's small pleasures. I love getting a new CD. I can,t wait to get the new Band-Maid CD from Japan once it comes down in price a bit.

I've never wanted to be in the computer or cell phone age. I found it disturbing enough to transition to CD's from records in the first place, after having skipped over 8-tracks , and cassettes tapes, but not reel to reel. First thing I did after retiring was to throw my cell phone over the fence into the woods, having never learned to send a text message.

It’s not practical to spend more money to buy streamer and pay monthly subscriptions. 

@jayctoy  For the price of about one CD per month I have access to hundreds of thousands of songs via Qobuz — many of them in hi res BTW — and discover awesome new music I would’ve never heard otherwise almost every day.  It’s the most fun I’ve had as an audiophile and music lover ever, and every month it’s the best 11 bucks I spend.  Or I could just spin CDs and listen to the same stuff over and over and over again.  No thank you, but to each his own.  

@lalitk 

Thanks for the video. I actually had an RCA under dash record player in my car back in the '60's before 8 tracks came out. The tone arm played underneath the records instead of on top. It played a stack of six 45's and actually didn't skip unless I hit a substantial bump or dip.

1 I own the music and also have a lot of obscure CD titles which will probably never be available for streaming. 

2 I have more invested in CD playback vs streaming and it sounds way superior on my system. (Jay’s Audio CDT2-MK2 / Denafrips Pontus / I2S connection) vs ( Bluesound Node 2I / Denafrips Pontus / coaxial connection)

3 I like physical media but dumped my vinyl decades ago because I was tired of warpage, “snap, crackle and pop”, rolling the dice every time I bought a used LP, and the royal pain of maintaining records and turntables.

My CDP is my best source. An ARC Ref CD9. It sounds so good it’s always a treat to listen.

“I play CD's because I can't get my turntable to work in my car.”

@aewarren 

This one is for you! 
https://youtu.be/rOt1Zpv-7wg

I had a top of the line Classe cd player that was rated very high back then plus 1 of the earlier Sony sacd players back in the early 2000’s.  Back then, it was proven that ripped cds sounded better than thru a cd player. I thought so too and sold the Classe. Still have the sacd player but haven’t used it in 15 years. I’ve been selling a couple thousand cds ever since. Now I stream ripped cds and from Qobuz and Tidal. 

I have tons of CDs, my player/dac combo sounds great to me, and I own everything that I listen to on my little system. Plus, I know what I like - I don't need a computer to create playlists for me. (I get ideas from books and publications for that.)

(1) Because most of them sound good/great

(2) When I'm "burning in" new cables (if such a thing exists), I avoid unnecessary wear and tear on my Sumiko Starling cartridge.

(3) I invested in a nice DAC and CD transport and feel guilty if they are only gathering dust

I don’t. When streaming rose to the same quality of CD and vinyl I dropped CD almost immediately. I have 2,000 CDs and 2,000 pristine vinyl albums. Then slowly stopped listening to my vinyl. Then stopped listening to the same old music I’ve listened to for the last five decades and discovered a whole new world of music.

I play CD's because I can't get my turntable to work in my car.

Because the only thing I know about streaming is that Flomax works.

DeKay 

I will NEVER "subscribe" to hear my own music. I will listen to the CDs I have and the CDs I create. I don't have any music on the iphone I was given, because the only way to get music on it is to belong to itunes or to buy an expensive Mac.

Bought and paid for. 
 

Great sound quality. 
 

Love the inspection process ensuring the disc is clean. 
 

Kept as a storage in case of computer failure.