Do You Still Play Compact Discs?

Do You Still Play Compact Discs?

  • Yes

    Votes: 132 71.7%
  • No

    Votes: 52 28.3%

  • Total voters
    184

jespera

Well-Known Member
Jan 12, 2018
494
539
200
London
I bought 3 today , all kinds .
Amy winehouse back in black.( great music but not the best recording :( )
Underworld
The notorios BIG .
Mdou moctar on order as well as Stevie ray vaughan .
Since i have the Mark levinson dac , i play more cd s then tape .
I dont visited the brussels city center that often but i m astonished how much vinyl shops there are .

Fully agree on amy winehouse. It was recorded analogue but with heavy use of digital compression ...
 

Phillyb

Well-Known Member
May 31, 2012
152
112
948
Still buying them from in the USA and overseas, I have a vast collection of music from the 1930's onward. I grew up on vinyl and owned a large collection also. Like analog sound from the mastering of CD's and DAC's used and understanding of the technology CD's are not the CDs from the early and mid-'80s. That like saying vinyl from the 1930s compared to the sound of vinyl in the mid to late '40s then into the golden ERA the 50's and the 1st stereo recordings. I know CDs is the whipping boy of the magazines, but they once said the sound system they reviewed was SOTA and they were using CDs as their source, so now these same people say CD suck. Give me a break when the CD was hip they loved them and highly promoted it, but when streaming took over big time over either physical format, then Vinyl they pushed knowing fool well the core supporters of this hobby our us now gray hair boomers who like me grew up with vinyl. I say buy both and enjoy both, but streaming is king now and as my kids and younger adults say to how can you just sit and listen to music, they love the portable, and even for me now getting up and flipping an LP after 5-7 songs is no longer my thing. Just purchased several superb CDs from England and the mastering superb, in the end, vinyl, CD or streaming it all beings and ends with the production and mastering of the recordings the format is not the issue it those companies that produce them.
 
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microstrip

VIP/Donor
May 30, 2010
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How many people really read cd liners - or at least more than once

We start reading them as soon as we buy our first prescription of reading eyeglasses ... ;)
 

cmarin

VIP/Donor
Jul 16, 2011
200
516
1,193
Texas
Digital (physical transport and sever based) and vinyl have long been playback options in my system. I still have many CDs, vinyl records and digital files.

Over time I have focused on pushing the envelope in one or the other playback options depending on available opportunities. So one option would be preferred over the others at any one point, but I have enjoyed them all and the journey.

In the past, I was firm believer that using CDs through the Kalista Dreamplayer transport (through a totalDac d1-12 mkII DAC with two reclockers in series) was the best possible route for digital in my system. The noise in the physical transport was just lower than the server options available to me at the time.

But recently I pursued the Taiko Extreme route with Taiko’s internal software, Taiko USB driver and Taiko USB card.

As evidenced by the numerous posts extolling the Extreme on the Taiko Extreme thread elsewhere on WBF, and my own direct experience, the Taiko’s team effort to lower the server’s noise floor has resulted in an increment in sound quality that is simply jaw dropping.

The Extreme is a transformative component that gets closer to the visceral and emotional characteristics of a live event. It must be heard if you’re a music lover.

And most importantly, the Taiko’s team efforts with lowering the noise floor on the Extreme has resulted in reducing the delta between music stored inside the Extreme’s hard drives and streamed via Qobuz (even with my very simple network) to a small increment. That is a major step forward.

Last week, I received the MkII version of the reclockers from Vincent at TotalDac. And that again raised the visceral and emotional level of the musical experience by a not insignificant increment.

I plan to let the system settle in for a bit more before I go back and compare the tricked out Extreme with the Kalista CD transport on Redbook. It will be an interesting experiment. The Kalista will share the benefit of the new MkII reclockers from totalDac, but not necessarily the incremental impact of the Extreme’s low noise floor; or the ability to stream or play high resolution files.

We shall see.
 

gds7368

VIP/Donor
Jan 9, 2015
214
190
420
Still very much enjoying the 4-box Zanden. Have a Kaleidescape for movies and have burned 550 DVDs on it, and just picked up a 2nd to give us more capacity to grow. All the DVDs are now stored (no boxes, just in DVD circular containers so a small fraction of the original space. And the interface is lots of fun. Not yet thinking of doing the same for CDs...but the Taiko is certainly starting to sound amazing but at well more than 2x the price of the Kaleidescape.
The Zanden stuff looks BEAUTIFUL, amazingly well thought out and designed! I’ve never heard it or seen it in person.

I don’t see any CD players on their current website. Is that the brand?

Have you compared the sound from your CD player to your Extreme to see which you prefer, and how you prefer the sound?

About five years ago I burned my 800 CDs to a NAS, donated all of them to Salvation Army, and haven’t looked back. Some days wonder if I should have kept a transport in the system.
 
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LL21

Well-Known Member
Dec 26, 2010
14,411
2,509
1,448
The Zanden stuff looks BEAUTIFUL, amazingly well thought and designed! I’ve never heard it or seen it in person.

I don’t see any CD players on their current website. Is that the brand?

Have you compared the sound from your CD player to your Extreme to see which you prefer, and how you prefer the sound?

About five years ago I burned my 800 CDs to a NAS, donated all of them to Salvation Army, and haven’t looked back. Some days wonder if I should have kept a transport in the system.
Hi...thanks! The Zanden 4-box digital is incredibly 'of a whole'...complete within itself. Is it now the most detailed digital? No, it is not...but it is incredibly detailed, and certainly nothing across the various great digital in the generation of the DCS Scarlatti ever inspired me to move.

It is no longer produced by Zanden who is coming out shortly with its next level of uber-digital known as the Seikoh. Check out Audio Exotics in Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, my last post on this was a bit misleading by accident. When I said the Taiko was sounding pretty incredible..I meant 'sound' as in what I am reading about it...not actually literally 'sound' as in I bought it! Sorry! That said, if there were one server I would consider, for the moment, I am very interested in the Taiko. However, I dont see myself going the server route just yet.
 
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andromedaaudio

VIP/Donor
Jan 23, 2011
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spiritofmusic

Well-Known Member
Jun 13, 2013
14,606
5,415
1,278
E. England
I'm on a mission to buy up the career-retrospective/unreleased vault cuts CD-boxsets that are maybe the last hoorah for the 5" silver disc format.
 

Sunny

Well-Known Member
Yes I still paly CD's in the store and at home. Love the tactile feel, the rich tones and reliability. I use a Meridian CD Player at home and a CH Precision D1 through the C1 DAC and X1 Power supply. In our high value systems we use the Technics SACD Player that also plays MQA CD's. I also love music by Blue coast music where Cookie records some amazing musicians and she does DSD right. Some classical music and Jazz choice CD's are also a habit to reach for and pull out from a case, you write the volume you like and in some cases the phase....Streaming is great, Vinyl is great Love it all.
 

montesquieu

Well-Known Member
Jan 27, 2019
269
417
148
Did you donate your compact discs to the Salvation Army or use them for target practice, or do you still have them on your shelf?

What are the advantages, if any, of playing compact discs, rather than streaming the exact same title and recording through a streamer + DAC?

If you still have and play compact discs, what CD transport do you use?

Yes I still play CDs.

I prefer vinyl of course, but a lot of classical music has only been available on CD (or latterly streaming) since the 90s or so, so CDs it has to be.

I stick with CDs not becase they are so great, but because file-based replay or streaming from online services totally sucks, for the following reasons:

1) I work in front of a computer all day, every day. The last thing I want to do is to interface with music through a laptop or ipad. It's a miserable way to select music when you ought to be skipping your fingers along a rack, feeling the music reaching out grabbing your interest.

2) CD sleeve notes aren't generally as good as you get with a decent LP / box set but are always going to be better than the average streaming service, many of which manage to omit even the composer's name from their standard view. (Utterly pathetic). Of course there are bolt-on services that provide more info and context as well as better-organised metadata, but really, why bother when you can lift a booklet and read without having to lift a laptop or ipad and scroll/generally faff about?

3) The ability to flick through infinite lists of music has led to a generation of people with the concentration span of a gnat, unable to sit and listen to a full length album. (Playlists are, of course, the work of the devil, allowing the intellectually challenged to skip more challenging tracks in favour of wall to wall easy listening). But seriously, when I have visited friends majoring on streaming, most can hardly listen through a full track without skipping forward, let alone the equivalent of a 'side' (20-25 minutes). It's awful.

4) Having essentially infinite stuff availalble on tap cheapens the listening experience and ensures younger generations will not get to know music as well as we oldsters did. Remember being 17 or 18 and owing maybe 20 or 30 albums, each of which was painful to buy (whole week's pocket money), and therefore carefully chosen and got played to death, so that even now many years later you still know every note, the precise duration of every pause, the phrasing and meaning of every lyric? What's the click-click-click equivalent? There isn't one. I would say especially at a young age (but at any age really) it's more valuable to really get to know well one or two Beethoven late quartets or piano sonatas than to have access to 50 full sets, likewise I own nearly every Dylan album and do play most of them once and a while .... but the most meaningful - and most often played - remain the same old handful from years back. Less is (frequently) more. The rhythm of human life is not well suited to infinities of anything.

5) Most streaming services are a bit rubbish - they tout hi-res in their sales material, but in fact most of their stuff is older lo-res, which is fine, but means their marketing claims are just BS. Plus of course the industry hasn't had a shake-out yet. It's highly likely that at some stage we'll see the balkanisation of content, so that eventually you'll need the music subscription equivalent of separate Netflix, Amazon Prime and Apple TV subscription to hear a decent spread of labels. I think it's inevitable. Who would throw away their CDs in the face of that risk? How many times do you want to pay for the same favourite music?

6) CDs sound better. On my Audio Note transport anyway, into an Audio Note DAC. I've never really been impressed by any dedicated streaming solution - indeed 100% of the crappest systems at Munich the last couple of times I was there were driven by streamers of one sort or another. (Not just bad sound but a capitulation, for the most part). QED I would say.

Of course I do stream occasionally (using Spotify to audition new music, deciding whether or not to bother buying the LP or CD). But as a main source? I'd rather cut my ears off.
 
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microstrip

VIP/Donor
May 30, 2010
20,806
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Portugal
(...) Not yet thinking of doing the same for CDs...but the Taiko is certainly starting to sound amazing but at well more than 2x the price of the Kaleidescape.
Lloyd,

Perhaps we must ask Emile in the Taiko thread - what is the best way of using the Extreme with a top vintage DAC having only SPDIF RCA inputs? Do we get better sound quality buying the Taiko SPDIF card or adding something like a DCS Network bridge to convert the USB in SPDIF? I usually cheat - I use the DCS Vivaldi upsampler to this purpose!
 

Al M.

VIP/Donor
Sep 10, 2013
8,686
4,476
963
Greater Boston
3) The ability to flick through infinite lists of music has led to a generation of people with the concentration span of a gnat, unable to sit and listen to a full length album. (Playlists are, of course, the work of the devil, allowing the intellectually challenged to skip more challenging tracks in favour of wall to wall easy listening). But seriously, when I have visited friends majoring on streaming, most can hardly listen through a full track without skipping forward, let alone the equivalent of a 'side' (20-25 minutes). It's awful.

4) Having essentially infinite stuff availalble on tap cheapens the listening experience and ensures younger generations will not get to know music as well as we oldsters did. Remember being 17 or 18 and owing maybe 20 or 30 albums, each of which was painful to buy (whole week's pocket money), and therefore carefully chosen and got played to death, so that even now many years later you still know every note, the precise duration of every pause, the phrasing and meaning of every lyric? What's the click-click-click equivalent? There isn't one. I would say especially at a young age (but at any age really) it's more valuable to really get to know well one or two Beethoven late quartets or piano sonatas than to have access to 50 full sets, likewise I own nearly every Dylan album and do play most of them once and a while .... but the most meaningful - and most often played - remain the same old handful from years back. Less is (frequently) more. The rhythm of human life is not well suited to infinities of anything.

Well said. Streaming is great for discovering new music, and sometimes I use YouTube for that. But I too like to get to know music really well, rather than jumping from recording to recording. I have a great set of Haydn's 104 Symphonies, of which I still haven't gone beyond knowing about 40 % of them. But the music there that I do know, I mostly know very well, having listened to each of those symphonies multiple times with really diving into flow, structure and color of the music. Same with Haydn string quartets; even just the two sets of op. 20 and op. 33 (each six quartets) that I have listened to many times already I still think not to know well enough, and I keep discovering new things each time. The music is too complex and rich to be "done with it" quickly. I am still a voracious consumer of for me new music, but nonetheless also there I usually listen multiple times to each piece. Lately a lot of jazz, and once again some contemporary classical avantgarde music after lately having explored more of the older classics. There is just too much in a really good piece of music as to glance over it by listening just once or twice. Last year I bought a lot of CDs, and still haven't listened to a good portion of them.

Streaming on my high-end rig would just overwhelm me, and I agree that it is not necessarily the best way to consume music. An embarrassment of riches to be presented with can indeed lead to an impoverished way of listening to music.

6) CDs sound better. On my Audio Note transport anyway, into an Audio Note DAC. I've never really been impressed by any dedicated streaming solution - indeed 100% of the crappest systems at Munich the last couple of times I was there were driven by streamers of one sort or another. (Not just bad sound but a capitulation, for the most part). QED I would say.

Of course I do stream occasionally (using Spotify to audition new music, deciding whether or not to bother buying the LP or CD). But as a main source? I'd rather cut my ears off.

I have witnessed streaming that sounds excellent, but it is rare and very hard to achieve. There is a synthetic quality to a lot of computer audio that is seldom a problem with good CD playback.
 

Fineito

Well-Known Member
Nov 23, 2013
21
19
298
Esoteric P01/G01/Concert Fidelity DAC - battery in one system.
47 Labs Flatfish/Brian Charney Pure Power for the transport/Kondo KSL DAC in my second system.
Both sound great to my ears. I've just never graduated to streaming (probably age related). I'm entirely happy though.
 

wil

Well-Known Member
Jul 22, 2015
1,482
1,510
428
I stream through Qobuz and the sound quality is excellent if the source is excellent -- just as with CD's. My system is optimized for the best quality however, which makes a big difference.

I always find it odd that people seem to think you can't approach music listening the same way through streaming as you do through physical media. I always listen to a full album at a time, straight through. And, like Al, I listen multiple times if the music and recording quality are worth the deep dive. For example, I've been listening to nothing but the same volume of Beethoven string quartets (Kuss Quartet) for about two weeks.

And, for classical devotees, there is the huge advantage of being able to compare different performances of the same works.
 
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cpcat

Well-Known Member
Jun 20, 2016
161
189
175
South Carolina
Still buy them (CDs) and they represent the vast majority of what I listen to.
However, they are all ripped to the hard drive and then the physical discs stay stored on a shelf. I then access the music library via a PC based Linux player/server (Daphile).
 

rando

Well-Known Member
Sep 22, 2019
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Online
With nearly anything newer the real concern is buy something issued on CD or gain direct access to 24 bit digital files . In at least a few cases lately streaming/sales won out shamelessly for just this exact reason. SACD really split the field with native DSD and PCM base rates so varied across labels or time.
 

Rhapsody

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Jan 16, 2013
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Rhapsody.Audio
I stream 100% of the time although I have cd, vinyl and R2R available is someone wants to demo something on one of these formats.

I can't think of the last time that I skipped around from song to song when streaming. I select an album and many times if I like the album/music I let it play through twice.

At one time I did skip around from song to songs with cd's or streaming, but that was five years ago. Streaming has come a long way in the last few years. I think everyone's listening habits are a personal experience. I surely enjoy my musical listening experience more now than I have in the last 65 years, which is when I started to listen to music on American Band Stand when I was four years old:0)
 

CKKeung

Well-Known Member
Jun 17, 2011
3,053
3,172
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Hong Kong

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