Are they coming back? Never left my life since 1988! I’m still buying new and hoovering up used and early pressings. I’ve a massive collection. I agree, vinyl is getting very expensive. I have a lot of that too!
I love collecting CDs. It bugs me when new songs or albums are released only on digital. If I can't stuff a disc onto a crowded shelf to collect dust, what's the point?
Amen to that. Friends & Family (generally the younger members) look at me like I’m crazy. I bought myself a few of the recent Beatles box sets for Christmas, vinyl and CDs versions, and they were all like, can’t you just listen on Spotify or Tidal? No fun in that…..
@@RUfromthe40s Yes, I know I could, there are apps to do it from TH-cam. However, I would rather it was top quality, as I listen a lot on headphones. When using headphones, the slightest defect is very noticeable. However, I do copy CDs for use in the car, or at least I used to. Leaving paid for CDs in the sun is not the best idea, but a copied one, well, just burn another. I know there are apps that you can download to Mp3, fine for the car, but for headphones, not so much! My old car used to play Mp3 from CDs, so I could cram a lot onto one CD. Convert the CD to Mp3 file, then burn to CD. My new car does not have a CD player, I find it a bit irritating! 😞
I'm old enough to remember when CDs were first released, it was amazing because there was no surface noise, no cracks, pops like a record, no tape hiss, no need to worry about Dolby at all, it was a perfect size and looks great when you have a lot in your library.
I'm with ya. I bought my first player (a Discman... all I could afford as a high school senior in '86/'87) and my first cd purchase in 1986 was Honeymoon Suite's "The Big Prize" because it was the only DDD disc in the store, and I wanted to hear what full digital sounded like. It was blissful. Over the years, I have accumulated about 2000 CDs, many of which are unplayable today because I didn't treat them right. I will say this... in recent years I have built a respectable 2 channel listening space and have begun to buy more vinyl, and on a proper rig, there is some charm in the sound from records that I missed from the cleanliness of CDs. Not the pops and crackles, but on recordings that were engineered for vinyl rather than for CD, because there is a degree of compression when engineered for CD, and the vinyl has a sound that I can only describe as "air" since I lack the vocabulary to say it more eloquently. Picking vinyl is a tricky endeavor these days. Anyway, CDs are still very much in my crosshairs, and I still love reading through the liner notes.
Yeah but you end up living in a record store. Rip 'em to flac, bung them on a server (Raspberry Pi running OMV with a USB drive will do), you have them instantly wherever you are.
@PrinceWesterburg I felt that way about 20 years ago. When being able to have anything at the touch of a button was new and seemed like treat. These days, with Spotify, there's no need to rip music anymore. It's true that streaming quality isn't the same, but it's darn good and sounds just fine on most playback equipment. Also, it can be fun to look through all the CDs and records and be reminded of music you may have forgotten about.
@@matthewpeterson3329 Honeymoon Suite: The Big Prize wasn't my first CD, but it was the first CD I got as a birthday present (along with Depeche Mode: Music for the Masses) in 1992, on my 17th birthday. The Big Prize has really stood the test of time - I ripped it to MP3 many years ago and it's been on every one of my devices, right back to my first Zune in 2008 (I made it abundantly clear I didn't want an iPod even though they were more popular and ultimately won out). But I still prefer to have CDs as much as possible.
@@mysticwolf75 Awesome. I also bought a Zune in 2008 and returned it about a week later. I just couldn't make it work, which is most likely because I am technologically inept.
As a musician, I still market my music on CDs. The sound is much clearer than a stream, plus fans have something tangible. The photos, booklets and graphics are something a stream doesn't have. In addition, I have been collecting CDs since 1988 and I still buy them today. Currently, I own 2700 CDs and I have no plans on dropping this format. Besides, when was the last time someone had asked to see someone's "streaming" collection? Long Live the CD 💿.
Arghh! a musician, I've been a DJ since 1976 and I just want to say that I totally 💯agree with you. Bet you thought I was going to slag you off, not a bit of it. Nice to see musicians and DJ's agreeing on something ha! I have to confess I rip my cd's and work from hard drive (320kbs) I have no intention of ever stopping buying these babies. Downloads are OK but you just don't get that physical buzz.
new cds have the same characteristics with streaming, at least new greek cds!hard bass, closed sound, normalization with flat waveform that surpasses the ceiling, loudness so much with gain at 98-99. It's a pity that cds have not the sound with older cds before 2010.
@@vinylmastersgr1036 you do realize that all of these factors have nothing to do with CDs but with the mixing and mastering process and the hardware music is being played. it's not like Vinyl which is analog media. CDs store digital data
@@kxdsh How do you know what bitrate he is using? Ripping CDs to WAV is the best way to go. FLAC also works but CDs share the same bitrate as WAV which means better compatibilty. Stay away from those lossy crap. The sound quality can be solved if he is playing uncompressed audio files using good digital to analog convertors.
It’s truely amazing how CDs are still being sold over 40 years after release! I collect them and have a Sony Mini Hifi system from the early 2000s and I think they sound great. It’s so refreshing to not get caught up with ads and other crap filling streaming services these days. Just pure, high quality digital music. Happy that more people understand the value of CDs!
I remember buying my first CD player back and I want to say 1982 it was a Yamaha player I paid I think $450 back then which was kind of a lot of money in my opinion it's funny you say after 40 years the CD format is not that old compared to the vinyl format which goes Way Way Back
@@dobermanguy9437 yeah wow! That’s amazing do you still have the player? I guess there was no real successor to CDs when it comes to a physical format. You had things like minidisc and DCC but they never really saw home hifi adoption. I was born in the mid 2000s and I still used CDs up until around 2016 when Spotify started to become popular here in Australia
CDs first overtook vinyl in 1993 in UK. At that point, vinyl too had been going for about 40 years. Like CD, vinyl took around 10-11 years from being introduced to being the best-selling format.
@@hello_mate8974 yes it was. Ended up building a new setup but my sister enjoys the CP11. Sounds pretty good given the price I paid. The rubber on the drivers on my speakers are worn though
The irony for those of us born a lot before 1997 is that we remember how intimidating the $11-$15 price tag of CDs was when CDs first hit the market (on average, new records were $5-7.)
i remenber $35, it dependend on how many stores existed in your city but in 93 ,prices did came down all over the world when they manage to find a cheaper material to produce cds ,only more sensitive compared to 80´s ones
in 82 to 84 a cd was enough to buy two vinil and a good cassette to record more music,till 93 i just bought 7 cds after was when prices came down and still thinking that cds were good sounding ,i bought many that i liked ,that never listen to them till today because they sound a lot worse than the vinil records i already had
that´s candyland not even special price cds had so low price and the cheapest cds were was in early 90´s 15 to 20 dollars and 7.50 special priced ones, normally they took the sticker where it said special price or others depending on the label and sold them as new releases
According to a guy who works with music, the CD is very compressed compared to the recording in the record studio. Because he said in the studio they work with 32 Bit. and they use it when creating a vinyl record they do not use a CD as a source
Not true sony has had copy-protected CDs even though those discs were not allowed to have the compact disc symbol. it was is a file on the disks that could cause you to have problems with your computer
Already in the 80's, the record companies demanded a copy ban on DAT players. so you could only make a perfect digital copy of your CD. for a time, it was not even allowed to sell DAT in the United States. the record companies went to court
Love CDs. No matter what happens to your music collection; stored on a drive or loss of the music on a streaming service, CDs are tangible music you can actually hold in your hands with art work to enjoy when everything else crashes. Hope there's a returning trend by the music industry to start pressing CDs again.
@@iorreneft correct, but where is the problem in dragging the files onto computer storage in original quality? This way the music will survive forever and you can use it wherever you wan't without having to change cd's.
I am a HUGE fan of of ANY physical media. And it's important we don't let it die! I'm a bit of a audiofile head to an extend, and I am currently using my CD-Rom drive in my desktop with EAC to rip them into WAV files. Sounds so amazing all together! Way better then the streaming platforms.
Rip them into FLAC or APE instead, they compress without losses (as in zip compression) and you don't have to have files so big as WAV, while retaining ALL the sound information bit by bit, meaning an exact audio copy of the original
Also physical media is something they can’t take away from you! As in the SpongeBob episode Mid Life crustacean they took that off of iTunes and also the streaming service and also Sony took away Mythbusters and Deadliest Catch from ppl who actually PURCHASED it because they lost the license for those showsso the ppl who spent so much money for it so if it’s important to me I mean very important physical is the way to go for me!
After listening to mostly streamed and compressed music for 5-6 years, going back to CDs has been a revelation. I love it. It’s so much nicer on the ears!
@@Scotty-P If you like some extra harmonical distortion, higher noise floor and an occasional pop then yes, go for vinyl. The more expensive the turntable, the more it sounds like a CD.
@@KRAFTWERK2K6 There are literally dozens of blind listening tests on the net where people couldn't hear the difference between 256kbps or higher mp3 vs losless. MP3 is perfectly fine.
Cd is the perfect median. You own the music, and if you take care of it it lasts a lifetime. The cd dumping of the last few years has been a bonanza for collectors like me. I've been buying favorites for 5-6 bucks....life is beautiful.
You nailed it on the head with your mentioning that a physical CD (or LPs and cassettes), if taken care of, is always available in our collections. While an artist can pull their music off a streaming service or the streaming service may even go out of business. I've been trying to drill that fact home with people who are supporters of streaming music over having CD collections. The point being, when you are relying on a streaming company to control of your music collection, your favorite music could disappear. You are renting access to your music with streaming. If that streaming service decides so and so's band is no longer worth keeping on their servers due to low listeners, they can delete that artist. With having a CD collection, you can go to your shelf and listen to that CD no matter if it is in print or is popular or not. During this pandemic, I have been buying tons of used CDs on Discogs at such fair prices. It can be a fantastic way to fill in missing albums in my CD collection and try music that I haven't thought of previously. Plus, buying physical media, especially directly from independent bands/ artists goes a long way to helping that artist keep making music and earn a living. Streaming royalties are generally rubbish. Streaming devalues music by making it completely disposable.
I found out last night that Apple can remove “your album “ from your own library also not just streaming. What you download from iTunes is technically a streamed copy and not an album I heard that years ago but didn’t really think about it but yes, the artist and album have been removed from iTunes Store and from my devices that are online, I still have the album because I use a digital audio player to listen to music not my phone but I have a cd of the artist which I had to import from Japan and that was to replace the cd I bought in the late 80’s which I gave to a Japanese girl who was a bit homesick, that one was bought in a major metro area in Australia in the country area I live in there isn’t a lot of international titles available.
@@ロクアンドロルしかない : I've never had that with iTunes, however, in the past I did experience that very thing quite often from Spotify - even if I'd physically downloaded the album to my device....!! 😳 NOT good!! 😩 All the same, I grew up when LPs and cassettes were the main way to buy music, and even though I enjoy digital downloads for the convenience, in 99% of cases, I have the original either on LP, CD, or Cassette as well, and still buying physical too.. No-ones taking THAT bastard away from me!! 😂👍🏻
I started re-collecting CDs about 5 years ago. Most of mine were originally bought in the late 80s and early 90s. A lot of my old favorite artists were still making new music, and that's when I rediscovered them. However, I don't actually listen to the CD live. I collect them in a box, each one in a protective plastic sleeve and in a box after I admire and rip them to music files. I play the "albums" from my computer through it's bluetooth to an inexpensive bluetooth receiver, and from my receiver I have old fashioned speakers plugged in, powered by the receiver. All the music programs for Andriod phones are pure awful, so I normally don't use my smartphone's bluetooth, except when away from home (I have a copy on my smartphone too). Those modern Andriod music programs are geared toward singles, not albums. But on my computer I easily organize them by artist, then albums, and I play the actual album, not single music files. I love it like that, just like playing a whole CD. The reason why Andriod music programs are pure awful is that the established cultural powers are hell-bent against albums and artists and want to hold them back to extent reasonably possible. Rock artists have been singing about them wanting to destroy ROCK music for generations now, and believe it or not, they're right. The entire music industry, including albums and CD labels, are all mutually dependent on one another, fully interdependent and interlinked. They way they successfully demolished most of Rock and music industry is cannibalizing the industry from within, most notably with itunes, and then the streaming music platforms. Teens that use to collect albums generations ago no longer collect, they and others have been streaming music. What that leads to is the habit of listening to songs till tired of it, then never listening to it again. One a streaming service lapses or goes out of business, then so to all those tunes. And, the tunes are saved in libraries that aren't album oriented. So everybody just forgets about the music after listening to fulfillment. Lots of teens who grew up in the early 2000s can't even remember the music they listened to, and they have zero access to the music they once bought. It's just forgotten music. However, teens from the 70s and 80s sometimes have enormous album collections (or CDs, tapes or 8tracks even). They periodically show them off, for instance a popular band, take Led Zepplin, they might show off their Led Zepplin IV album to youth from the current generation, then presto, they are hooked on those albums. That goes for GnR's Appitite, Metallica's Black album, Def Leppard's Hysteria, Aerosmith's 70s albums, and their comeback album 1987's Permanent Vacation (the last album Aerosmith did macho style with Steven Tyler's yak-yak-yak-yeow metal screamin'. After that they turned to soul rock with Tyler doing love squeels. Now, for folks who stream Aerosmith for example, all their music is blended together: 70s Rock, 80s Metal, 90s Soul Music, 2000s forward sweet love ballads, all blended together like stew. It's very similar to other artists that have been around for generations and making music all the while. The result: loss of their personality and growth and evolution as artists, they are now just a single photo snapshot in musical time. Not interesting for many. All things considered, there is less long term interest in artists because it's difficult to visualize them growing, so folks don't track them year by year because they figure "nothing ever changes, they are who they are and Ive already got their best songs streaming" so they don't track the artists. The music industry collapsed because it didn't sell music. It didn't sell music because streaming songs sold have zero collectable, as soon as the listener tires of the tune, they don't track the artists and forget about the songs. And, they only purchase whatever is on the radio, if that. Artists no longer made much money making new albums, so they didn't make new albums very often. The quality of music suffered, that added another reason to not collect music. The government got more involved in controlling the cultural aspects of music making and pumping billions$$ into controlling Rock radio stations, the music award industries and investing heavily in record labels, and this was all done without news coverage. As for their Front of Control: they used the PMRC to stick labels on albums with bad lyrics, all the while outside channels encouraged deviant outtrage on album. The result: an excess of album for the public to bemoan (that was step 1) . . . step 2, the public loses interest in collecting music. Now, today, we live in a world where the music industry was heavily injured by those actions. The public has suffered through a mega loss of quality music while the cultural powers patiently wait for the last rock bands and rock stars to completely die out. It's a long term project they are patiently engaged in: cultural engineering. As for me, I buy my CDs, collect them and save the media and cool booklets that come with them. I enjoy the music which as actually improved thanks to quality recording technology becoming exponentially more affordable. Even so, they bands I love are all now getting very old, and sadly, they are almost gone. It's up to folks to now stream music to STOP NOW, and START COLLECTING. They will enjoy it tremendously. And better yet, decades from now they will have something magnificent to share with upcoming generations, and they will all be mega shocked at the cultural changes [of the future] which we are yet to know about, but rest assured, the cultural engineers have it planned for them right now, with minor changes as they go along by the new powers that be . . . . As a result of all that, stereo equipment industries scaled back production as well, to a tiny fraction of equipment sell today. (that's why I use cheap computer equipment to rip CDs, much cheaper because the music industry was hit so hard) . . . the solution is: collect music on real media: CDs, albums, tapes . . please
I almost got rid of my CDs last year because I can stream Spotify through my Sony amp/Wharfdale speakers. But then one day I played a song on CD straight after listening to the streaming version and was bowled over by the difference in quality. The result was that instead of dumping my discs, I upgraded to a brand new Denon CD player. Then I bought a new Teac tape deck so I can make mix tapes from my CD/vinyl collection. I rarely stream anymore. Physical media sounds better to my ears and simply brings me more enjoyment. I hope more people in the future discover that they feel the same way.
i use streaming for those days when it´s too cold and arrive from work completely wasted ,in a sofa i push my keyboard and listen to all ,instead of looking for in several shelfs filled with records and cds but when listening to music i like to hear all that was recorded and spotify isn´t that good but aceptable, making playlists it´s fine and easy but not all is there , around 2018 i remenber to record a minidisc with a playlist from spotify and well done again the md player for the car, the same with cassettes ,even crossfaded
Regarding the sound quality, especially as compared to streaming or mp3, I couldn't agree more. Those sources just don't deliver the dynamic range that really bring the music alive. I stream and I like the convenience of it, certainly, but I love having the CD's too.
I remember seeing CDs 💿 for the first time back in 1984 (they were originally introduced in 1982). I had started collecting LPs in 1974, enjoyed collecting them, but eventually sold off my record collection of over 3,000 LPs in 2001, basically because of space. I started buying CDs exclusively in 1989, and still collect them today. Long live CDs 🌈✌️💿 and physical music.
never stopped buying CDs. i think they're the coolest music format. i am not really a vinyl person but everytime i see a colored vinyl records i wanted to collect them too haha
Dude, I started buying the odd vinyl I thought was cool over the years (collect mostly cds) but the crazy thing is, the vinyl ones have quadrupled in price. Some of them now over 400 bucks each! I'm sure I dont have a cd worth that
5:53 AAD: First letter means the content on the CD was recorded on analog. Second letter means the recording was MIXED in analog. Third letter means it was mastered in digital, which would obviously be the case for all CDs.
I’ve noticed at the local Walmart they were basically 4 or 5 bucks each. Those 4 and 5 dollar discs are now 9 dollars and up. Got a few thrift stores that I frequent. One place sells 10 cents each. The other a dollar each.
@@Lexy-O I disagree. If the popularity of CDs increase, the labels are going to increase the prices because people are willing to pay the higher prices and the same will happen in the second hand market.
It might be a good idea to replace your vinyl collection with CDs ASAP. Your right the price of CDs could sky rocket. CDs last longer and sound purer clear and better than snap crackle and pop vinyl.
I believe the digipacks are due to 1) cheaper to manufacture and 2) more environmentally friendly. There are bags special made for the digipacks if you want to protect them better.
@@ModernKaveman digipacks are not cheaper the materials used are expensive it was a try of giving importance to art cover that it got lost ,no one looks to covers or inlay pappers with diminished letters with lyrics that mostly seem litle black dirt on colour pages
My very first cd was Madonna's Like a Virgin which I bought way back 1984. Still plays like a dream. Now I have around 2000 and I don't intend to stop collecting.
my first cd was a version of a doble lp from CCR "chronicle" that came out for what today is 7€ in a magazine than i bought also for 5€ the soft parade by the Doors, some say it´s a bad album but i like it since new and it sounds very good
Me too. I bought Like a Virgin, then all the other Madonna's album. And then i got my very first cd player (that i still have, and still run very good) the Technics Slp-220. I still remember the first moment when i putted the cd in the tray and pushed play. I cannot believe my ears...no hiss, no noise, only music. And during the pause...absolute silence! Fantastic!
I started buying cds in the late 80’s but never quit buying vinyl. Through the years i managed to get the best of both worlds while building a large music collection and i will continue to do so.
Something else to note is that I think the culture of streaming has really changed one's relationship to music compared to when people owned physical media. I grew up listening to tapes and then CDs in the 90s, and I always had my collection on hand. I would constantly look through my collection to see what I wanted to listen to, and was continuously being reminded of older stuff I had. With streaming, I think there's a tendency to forget stuff you liked in the past, cause it's not visually in front of you, so you tend to listen to whatever is new, and a lot of great music can start to be lost. I remember in 1996, looking through my CD collection, I would pick out stuff that I bought in 1992 or 1992 as much as the newer stuff, cause it was always visually and physically in front of me, and I don't think that's the same as with streaming. I'm sure there will be people getting back into CDs for nostalgia, or younger people romanticizing a past they were not part of (many who grew up in the 90s would romanticize the 70s), and there are plenty of real pros to CDs, like the sound quality, or the sleeve art, the physicality etc. but I think having a physical collection does affect the way you listen to music.
100% true. Interacting with objects- be it books, CDs, records - is entirely different from using digital media. Objects form a ‘story’ of sorts, and can lead you forward or back and make unexpected connections. Great analysis!
I completely agree with you... CDs are coming back. I've owned vinyl since the 80s and still buy the odd album, but for about the past 6 - 12 months I've been grabbing CDs, largely at thrift stores and used stores where I'm getting them for 1 or 2 dollars each... I have a feeling these "dollar days" will come to an end...
A few years ago you could get the most iconic CD's from thrift stores (op shops) for a couple of dollars. In 2022 it seems like that time has passed, most of the top content has long been harvested.
My dad was the engineer who repaired the CD moulding machines at Philips DuPont Optical (PDO) in Blackburn, UK (that was later Polygram, Seagram, Deluxe etc). The process came from the 12” LaserDiscs. They made a lot of CDs for Polygram (as it was a Philips company) and they were very keen on stating whether the disk was “AAD” etc etc. This was the factory that produced the infamous “bronzed” disks. I had a summer job there carrying boxes about and they had a problem with a new auto-packing machine that was slightly crimping the libretti (which is what they called the paper inserts). They had a problem with the production of Anthrax “Persistence of Time” cd. I rushed out and bought it and yes, the machine that was causing trouble put some slight indentations on the booklet. The CD is proudly bronzed too lol. The factory was very proud of the product and employed lots of skilled people, despite the disk rot!!!! My summer job was in the CD packing department and I was amazed by the quality control, even at this stage.
If you're buying used CD's, make sure to hold them up to the light to make sure it doesn't have CD rot. You'll notice pits and sometimes holes in the reflective layer that's sandwiched between the clear plastic. I've had a few like that.
@@fraudsarentfriends4717 Nope. You have to be especially careful with CD's from the very first few years of the format, 83- 85 or so. They didn't have the manufacturing process down yet and a lot of CD's from that era are prone to rot. I speak from experience. I've run into quite a few discs with pinholes in them -- which itself is not always an indication of rot but it's still especially prevalent with CD's from that era.
CDs never went away. I've always been able to buy my favorite album on CD, even when streaming got popular. Yes, vinyl has made a comeback and I buy vinyl sometimes too. The thing that a lot of people have realized is that you don't own anything with streaming. Without an internet connection you have nothing. With a CD or vinyl, you always have that music.
I have always loved CD's. I have about a thousand CDs in my collection. I still buy them so in my book they never went out of style, and I'm glad that they are making a comeback, even though they never went away. 😁
It's such a buyers market right now, but, then again, I never stopped buying CDs. When you can get topnotch albums used for $1 on clearance at Half Price Books it just makes total sense. I have a world-class collection for a fraction of the cost of vinyl LPs. I've been buying them since 1984 when they were like $18 a disc. Don't pay anything close to that today.
@@ontherhodes8088 I took thousands of vinyl LPs and Singles to the tip when I moved house, didn't have room for them and didn't have time to sell them on or pass them on to anyone! I was a bit upset, but a woman has to have a new house!! :-((
May I recommend to you a short-lived Aussie band called McPhee. They released only 1 album, in 1971 - self titled heavy psychedelic rock album. The lead singer, Faye Lewis.
I'm only 14 and I was caught in this trend of buying cds, I definetely have almost 200 now and I could see myself having loads and loads by the time I'm in my own place lmao. I'm glad they made a comeback
It’s great that CD’s are making a comeback. I have tons and tons of CD’s. I collect more Cassettes and Vinyl, but it’s nice to know that there truly is a market for all these physical formats. I’m happy CD’s and Cassettes are coming back stronger than ever.
For classical music, there is no substitute for CDs. In addition to greater dynamic range, CD prices can't be beat. In the past year, I have purchased entire catalogs of conductors, soloists, and orchestras from 1960s to the present for $2-$3 per NEW CD. For the price of 4 LPs, I can own 100 CDs.
Good point. In the battle between analogue and digital, your point often gets missed - likely because most people are buying rock, pop, or jazz. I've had a bad case of "boxed-set-itis" over the past 10 years or so (only cured by retirement and living in a country with an abysmal postal system) and have bought dozens of boxed sets (total number of CDs I own is around 6,300.) By clicking 4 times over a period of a year or so, I was able to buy all of Herbert von Karajan's DG recordings, amounting to over 300 CDs. Not only are they a hell of a good price, it's very likely that even if I wanted to buy the albums, it would be near impossible to collect them.
Now the record companies usually have low dynamics on CDs. and the record companies think that audiophiles or people who like classical music buy music on another medium such as Hi-res or SACD or Vinyl. or maybe listening to Qobus or Tidal
@@Andersljungberg CD with good mastering without compression is a top format. CD sound as a shit since loudness war has started in the past. But it's a good format.
Born in 69 I went from vinyl to cassette, back to vinyl for a brief period, and then went CD from about 1986 onward. Did dabble a little bit with SACD in the early 2000s. You just can't beat physical media. You have a lifelong back up that will never be converted into some subscription-based streaming BS. Storage is so cheap now, it is ridiculous. I can fit all my music on one USB flash drive. Although not as cool as LP cover art, still nice to have some artwork with your music. Recently I hauled out a lot of my CDs (I have hundreds) and finally categorized them and ripped to FLAC format. (side note: don't try this on one of those crappy USB-powered CD drives for laptops. Get a proper internal or AC powered external DVD drive) It's better quality than the MP3s you get off of Amazon. On my home system, which is pretty decent. I can hear the difference. Also agree with you about the "remasters". Sometimes they are a clear improvement if done right, but usually they just are cranked up to 11 and you actually lose some dynamic range.
The first CD I ever purchased was 'Are you Experienced' by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. I grew up in the era of cassette tapes, but I did outgrow that format and embraced CDs. I still collect CDs to this day and my Sony Discman is definitely a prized possession! I have a pretty large collection and I never intend to get rid of it. I bought quite a few CDs just a few days ago...CDs beat streaming for me, as I love the physical aspects of it! I only have a Spotify account to 'sample' albums of interest ;)
For me CD never went away. Been buying most of my music on CD since 1992, and still do buy CDs till this day. While I've got a collection of iTunes downloads, I've never paid for a streaming service and don't intend to start. And I've been loving buying CDs for $1 - $5 on eBay or at thrift stores, but figure those days are likely coming to an end. Excluding niche formats such as SACD or DVD Audio, CD is still the highest quality format thats accessible to most people, and allows you to hear music the way it was meant to be listened to. Its yours forever (unless you sell, give away, or lose the disc, or it gets damaged of course), its a one time purchase with no ongoing fees, and since most people are getting rid of them, they're cheaper than ever. There's nothing but upsides to them in my book. :)
That Sony DVP-S9000ES DVD/CD/SACD player you showed is a fantastic unit! The analog section is incredible with high end audio grade capacitors and components. I'm surprised they are still affordable, even on eBay. Not many CD players built that well that are still reasonably priced.
@@HiFiTurtle wow that was a fantastic deal! I paid a bit more, but still feel these are diamonds in the rough. How about all of that copper and the 30lb weight? It’s built like a tank!!
@@wal i did bought one be cause i wanted to listen how better the SACD sounds and i kind of liked the sound but why didn´t they start to deliver all cds with 2 channel technology of SACD , i tried to listen with a av amplifier at a friends house but i really didn´t like the way it sounds with a surround system it´s kind of a curiosity but not what i expected to hear when this friend of mine startesd to say how incredible it sounds but i would prefer better two channel sound than a complete 7.something divided tracks on one stereo recording, i since a lot of years conect my t.v and some years later my video system to my stereo equipment and liked it that way it sound incredible, once a friend of mine after listening to a video he asked me if i had a DTS system that i don´t really know what it is ,i know it´s the sound type of the cinema i go to watch new movies but technically i don´t know how diferent is from surround patern(sorry but my english doesn`t go that far, in tech. explained). Regards
CD's do occasionally fail due to disk rot. Back them up by ripping them to wav or flac files on a computer, or better yet, make a disk image on your hard drive, and from this you can make a clone of the original disk to play in your CD player and keep in the original case when and if something happens to the original. Disk. Disc. Disque. I hate multiple spellings.
I made the transition from cassette and vinyl to cds when the format was released and I’ve only bought cds since. There is just something so satisfying about having a physical copy of the release with artwork etc like you mentioned. Even when downloads were at their peak if a physical copy of the DL was available I would buy it. IMO cds are the perfect format for collectors that do not have the vinyl bug. I did vinyl as a kid bc it was the only format available and have no desire to go back....long live CDs!
@@thatperson9292 because if you use cassette as a primary format the tapes/cassettes don’t have a long life span relative to albums and cds. The tape gets stretched or eventually eaten and then your out one of your favorite releases.
I came to CDs fairly late, around 1998 I think, just because growing up we simply couldn't afford to splash out on a CD player, not when we already had a faulty Amstrad Music Centre, with turntable, tuner and cassette deck. But once we finally got one I had no desire to go back to vinyl or cassettes. About 12 years ago I got myself set up with a half-decent Denon system... Just a CD player, an amp and a pair of speakers for about £500, which is a third of what my mate paid just for his turntable. Despite all the money he's thrown at his system, I still think my CDs sound better than his vinyls.
I have to correct you. SACD. it is not 24 bit. It is not PCM at all on SACD. SACD is DSD digital direct stream. a system with 1 bit so only two positions positive and negative. but extremely high sampling rate. which should give it more analog in character to the sound. and the sound can also be in true 5.1 sound, ie surround. SACD is still produced, for example, by mofi and analog production on Acoustic Sounds, there are currently 1390 SACD's. DSD is available in different levels. eg dsd 64 which means 64 times higher sampling than on a regular CD. DSD128 and DSD256 are also available.
I bought my first CD player and CD in 1983. Still buying CDs to listen to on commute (and on my home system, Transport) Be aware that many "Remasters" are garbage over compressed trash (the 2018 Giles Martin Palorphone Beatles remasters are the exception THOSE are excellent)
CDs did disappear from stores for a while, but have recently made a slow comeback. I'm buying again. DVDs never lost momentum, and seem to have increased in number with old TV shows in compliation and old movies being rereleased.
The ℗ date on any musical medium (including vinyl) is the sound recording copyright date, and was first used in 1972. It shows when that particular recording was first mastered and released. CDs were not in general release until the early 1980s, and most of those early CDs used the same mastering tapes as vinyl or tape versions of the recordings to make digital masters. These may have been the original analog masters, or more likely copies of that original masters sent to various countries. Remastered CDs (or any other medium including downloads) are sound recordings that have used (if possible) the earliest generation master tape to make digital masters for duplication. During this process, noise reduction, equalization, compression, or other electronic adjustments may be implemented to make the resulting sound different than the original master. This constitutes a new sound recording that can be copyrighted with an updated ℗ date. That is the primary reason for remastering and re-issuing music every few years: to extend copyright protection for the owners of the recordings, not necessariy to provide improved audio quality. In fact, many remastered recordings sound worse, especially when excessive compression is used (check out "loudness wars").
I admire your enthusiasm for CDs, though I must point out one thing: the first compact disc was not manufactured until 1982, and not commercially released in Europe or North America until 1983. Therefore the Rainbow album that you show us from 1975 was a reissue from its very first release on CD, though that may have been the first CD version (for a long time it was not standard to put the year of release on CD reissues). And while the AC/DC CD from 2003 is indeed a remastered version (and a good sounding one in my opinion, as are the rest of the albums from that series) previous versions would also have been reissues from 1983 or later - even if the only date shown is 1980. Anyway, again I'm glad that you and others are finally discovering (or rediscovering) the advantages owning CDs over streaming or vinyl.
I like Vinyl best, more spacial and depth of sound, but I can't play a record in a car, plus they would take up too much room. A stylus wouldn't last long with the potholes we have!
if you had a good turntable you would notice remastered or not the bad sound of guitars on any cd or maybe you never listened to the Lp that reproduces guitars perfectelly , and cd is the problem the DAT quality is much better but not as good as the main format ,the record and try a 70´s amplifier they have a proper phono input ,it´s ridiculous the phono stages in some expensive and modern amplifiers and those fluance or pr-ject are just bad players ,it´s the same of having a 50€ dvd player to play cds
Great to hear from lots of like minded people. I went early into CDs, in those days there wasn’t much available. I remember they were $20 and quickly rose to $25. That was a lot of money in the early 80s! Taking inflation into account CDs are one of the few commodities that have actually reduced in price. Like many others have said, have picked up some great titles second hand for cheap in physical stores and on eBay. Love the thrill of the hunt. Have 1000+ and still growing. I don’t use Spotify unlike so many people I know, as many have commented you just can’t beat owning the physical copy!
AAD, ADD and DDD labels disappeared in the early 90s. At first, all digital was considered "hi-fi". Today, an AAD would be considered the highest quality
The first commercial CD releases were in 1982 coinciding with the first commercial CD players hitting the market. 1975 is the original release of the album on the original analog formats and not when that CD reissue was pressed
Kept the vast majority of my CDs. Still enjoy them. That said, my hifi setup is amp, streamer, iPhone in, CD player, 3 head cassette deck, turntable, and minidisc player ! I like it all 😃 I still love hunting CDs in the thrift stores. But I’m super fussy about condition. Any scratches and I put it back, you will always find another, and that seems to mean I have good sounding disks.
mini disks sound so good and metal cassettes have a beautiful sound played loud. Same with super vhs. Used to record gigs with a super vhs. the sound strips are so wide its cd quality.
Absolutely CDs are coming back. Sure downloads are convenient but most cost more than CDs. And at Amazon you get the download for free with the purchase of most discs sold by Amazon. I always prefer to buy the CD.
I’m glad the cd’s are coming back, because there are CD players that have pitch controls, which I personally love. And from my point of view, the CD players are available in music stores, like Sam Ash & Guitar Center.
yes they never stoped selling cd players or cds so this comeback seems a play to make people buy cds because yesterday they were kind of forgoten but today it´s come back time , and pitch is comon on cd players since early 90´s so congratulations for using this function ,are you a dj?i worked with the first denon professional that the controls could be screwed to the top of the mixing table and the players in other place
@@edwincancelii2917 till 93 only bought 7 cds but as i was the owner of a radio station ,i had all the cds i could get and also worked as a dj for 35 years but i never used cds ,records and two sl-1200mkII were more practical
I started buying CD's in 1988. They still play great. Get a Disc DR to revive your CD if it gets scratched. Compared to vinyl and tape, CD's are almost indestructable.
There are a lot of good buys at yard sales and flea markets. I've gotten decent CDs for $0.25 and even $0.10 each. It's a cheap way to build a CD base. I rip all my CDs in lossless to my HDD and have a 2 point back up system (PC and external drive) in case something happens to them. I can also easily convert things to different formats, making it easy to transfer to various media (phone, memory stick, even a mix CD). I use dbpoweramp tools to convert formats.
Each conversion affects the sound. and CDs today have very poor dynamics especially pop music. loudness war. People report that the same music in other formats may have better dynamics. It may have to do with the fact that people who buy music in other formats are expected by a more expensive stereo and value sound quality higher. what are the other formats response Hi-res and Vinyl or other types of media. such as the SACD
CDs are a great source of uncompressed (bit wise) audio if you do your own remasters. Beware that some have been released more than once and some of the newer ones have dynamic range compression applied and even clipped waveforms. My advice is to find the oldest UPC code and get that one first. You can always normalize or add some compression if they are not loud enough but you can’t undo clipping, at that point it’s too late to fix it. Imports are also a good source of alternate versions and some sound better than the US release. You can then make what ever file format you like. If you want to go beyond remastering you can try full restoration and fix tape dropouts and glitches that existed in the analog master.
I know what you mean. I bought the digital download of Pat Benetar Greatest Hits-Remastered. Honestly, some of the tracks sound terrible. Remastered doesn't always mean better. I'd throw that out if I could find a vinyl or cd version of the "not remastered" album.
@@allenpamscofield The Van Halen CDs that are available now are a clipped distorted mess, no dynamic range at all. I had to get the old first releases off e-bay to get source that was even fixable. After I did the remastering on those and got the levels up to using all the bits they sound fantastic. It's amazing how many releases there are out there. For example there are at LEAST 9 different Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon CDs out there and they all sound different.
Yep. The Loudness Wars did more to ruin the reputation of CDs than anything else. I'd go for the earliest possible pressing, and I'd avoid later remasters like the plague.
@@ericschulze5641 OK, I'll call it "restoration". However, many "masters" no longer exist either lost in the Universal vault fire or just unplayable from time and poor storage. So a CD may be the best source still in existence. It's good enough for me to start with for my collection. Modern technology and fix almost any issue it has.
The very 1st. CD I bought was Wild Honey / Smiley Smile by The Beach Boys. (2 albums on one disc). Can't remember why because at that time I wasn't a super fan... an impulse I guess...but I was delighted by the thing. The second and 3rd. CDs that I bought were Grasping At Straws and Misplaced Childhood by Marillion. I still like the physicality of a CD. Long may they continue.
I got rid of my cd player & bought a rega planar 3 to play my age old & some new albums. I put all my 300 cds in a box ready to sell at about 50p each but never got round to selling & stored in loft, but i did convert the cds to flac files for my pc first. Even so for some reason I could not refuse buying old cds still brand new from one of those £1 bargain shops, which confirmed cd was on the way out. Only 4 years on & cd's are reviving again but not only that I saw the marantz cd6007 latest new model had usb playing flac files as well so I had to buy it. Luckily I never eventually sold my cds so I still have a great collection & the best of ×3 formats cd, flac & vinyl now. Suddenly hard for me time find any of those £1 cds in those cheap shops anymore too. Yes cd is back.
SACDs are 1 bit with a resolution measured in megahertz. DVD audio discs are 24 bit with 96khz resolution. If I recall correctly, both have significantly higher dynamic range than red book CDs and many have multichannel audio which nearly every other format does not offer.
I love the sound of the vinyl, but the CD is the most practical format for today’s world. The CD is more portable,smaller, recordable,more durable, and useable in cars. I agree with you on the AAD CD’s because when they remaster the analog CD’s the sound to me isn’t right. I love a CD recorder especially when it has 2 or more trays for CD dubbing. My happy medium is a good receiver, a good turntable and cartridge, a CD recorder with dubbing capability built in, and a carousel CD changer. I hope the CD comes back and Recorder decks become available again. The CD is a lot easier to handle and manage.
minidisc is more practical, litle, protected by it´s casing and still digital, i still record cassettes but also record minidiscs ,for the car it´s the best
@@RUfromthe40s I see your point. The minidisc would be better for car and portable use. As they are smaller and are better protected due to being in a case. Why they didn’t market them better I don’t know.
@@tonyperek7292 they tried but sony wanted to much money for the other brands to own the format, other brands did developed a diferent system of playing atrac files but too late , i did start to use mds because they were almost ofered, the high-end deck from pioneer in mint condition did cost me 20€ ,for the car 50€ from sony and have hundreds of mds that i recorded that i use to buy 20 md for 5€ from sony or tdk .Kind of forced to use them , a good cassette deck around 1.000€ ,tdk sa-x 2 cassettes 4.50€ ,later bought boxes of 10 for 10€ because i had a ct-959 from pioneer that also bought in mint condition for 40€ in 93 but had a ct-737mkII(90) from pioneer and drm-800 from denon since 1989 and several older ones, regards
I love the ease of use of CDs and the fact that I can use it in my home or car with no fuss. The sound quality is exceptional if you get a well mastered one. They remain a musical sweet spot for me.
Well mastered is key. And also rare. As CD players became cheaper and more ubiquitous, the mastering and loudness wars made everything sound like trash.
Great video! 2 things to add to this... Really good CD players can be had at thrift stores for around $20, and if they are in good physical condition and relatively clean, including inside the CD drawer or platter itself, (if a carousel type), then that usually indicates that it was taken good care of by its original owner, and therefore should probably still perform and play perfectly, (always test it in store before buying if it's used), and so used CD players can be a really great value! In my decades of experience with used/vintage/thrift store gear, I usually find that most Sony brand CD players are usually most commonly still in working order... Other brands aren't quite as "die hard" reliable in the used market, from what I've noticed, however, there ARE exceptions to this of course! (As I said earlier; always test in store before buying if it's a used CD player!) One other thing to mention is... THE "LOUDNESS WARS", which (negatively) affected quite a few new album releases on CD, especially (and very unfortunately), in the Pop, EDM, and Hip-hop genres, and mainly only since 2010 or 2012, when I started to really notice some newer album releases on CD were starting to sound kind of "harsh" or sometimes even "saturated" or distorted, (Billie Eilish comes to mind unfortunately, which was very disappointing, because her music and voice and style overall is great, but her first major release album, "When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go?" especially, was majorly distorted in certain songs to the point of occasionally not even being able to understand her vocals/lyrics in certain musical passages where the bass was too strong for the compressor to work properly), (luckily her newer album "Happier Than Ever" was a slightly better sound quality recording overall, except in 1 or 2 songs which were still too loud), but anyway, my point is; that the OVERUSE of EXTREME levels of compression in many more recent albums, where the ENTIRE album is pretty much at the MAXIMUM recording level for CD, (which is actually extremely high, even better than other formats, but still), when the producer or masterer turns the levels on EVERYTHING ALL THE WAY UP TO THE ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM in order for the overall album to sound as LOUD and "impressive" (at the very first few seconds of listening only), but then if you actually listen to the entire album from beginning to end, you end up with "ear fatigue" or maybe even a headache sometimes, which is VERY irritating AND it's totally UNnecessary! (For recording "professionals" to do this!) That's one reason you had mentioned that oftentimes the older or original release of an album sounds better than the newest "remastered" edition of it. That's not always the case, but if it is that way, then most likely the newer version of said album uses a much higher level of compression than the original recording did, therefore bringing the overall levels of every part of the song up closer to the maximum threshold of (clean) recording onto a CD, and if that point is ever exceeded, even for a split second, then it sounds distorted or at least very harsh on the ears. Older/original CD pressings of albums before 2010 really didn't do that, especially not as a common or intentional thing, like the (disgusting) recent "LOUDNESS" trend is, so the overall presentation of an older album may seem at first like it's not quite as LOUD or "impressive" (among the very first listen), as a newer album or version might, however, that overall lower recording level is MUCH easier and more enjoyable to listen to long term or even over the length of the entire album because it wasn't stressing out the format or the equipment, and therefore it still left some room for it to "breathe"! (a.k.a. "headroom"... Look it up. That's way too long of a topic to go into here!) Doing that increased the overall dynamic range of the music, the difference from the loudest to the softest passages, and therefore made it much more listenable overall. If one ever gets a standalone, component style CD recorder, (i.e. not just one on a computer), and ever plays around with making analog to digital recordings of tapes, vinyl, streaming, etc. onto CDs, and plays around with the recording level enough, then you will know to never let the levels go above the "0dB" maximum into the "clipping" threshold, (i.e. never lighting up the "clip" light), or else your music will sound like crap! It definitely sounds exactly like the original or source IF you keep the recording levels below that point, but once you go above it into digital clipping, then you will immediately know it because then the recording will sound like garbage! Lol! (Never do that again!) The LOUDNESS WARS though, through the OVERUSE of EXTREME levels of compression, makes too many brand new album releases on CD sound harsh and irritating, and unfortunately sometimes even to the point of being almost unlistenable. I really hope that "trend" dies out in popularity and the recording companies start respecting the CD format again, properly utilizing its strengths, while always taking into consideration its "limitations"... "Limitations" that are really only that if the format is grossly abused in that way. (Of recording way above its "safe" dynamic limits of "0dBFS" or 96dB of dynamic range, as mentioned in this video)... Which is PLENTY of range, (MUCH more than vinyl BTW), but only IF it is fully utilized properly, by recording onto the CD WITHOUT totally maxing out EVERY part of the music at ALL times! Anyway, "rant" over, lol! Anyone who starts getting into the CD format, especially after being "limited" by the overall poorer sound quality of MP3 and/or even most streaming services, will be very satisfied with their music on CD format! It's the overall easiest (physical format) to store, manage long-term, and find used anywhere and everywhere (any thrift store, garage sale, pawn shop, flea market, etc.), VERY wide variety of genres and artists, and for extremely cheap prices too, sometimes as cheap as 10/$1, and regularly (used) for as low as $1 per CD album. (And brand new releases on CD are also still a reasonable $8-$16 or so when first released and on sale)... Plus, if buying used ones, you can just quickly LOOK at the back/underside of the disc to see its condition, and if it's in relatively good shape then it's guaranteed to still play perfectly, which is really cool... Enjoy your collecting!
If you prefer vinyl, then go ahead and listen to your pops and clicks and RIAA equalization while having to fastidiously keep the groove clean (yes, NOT "Grooves" - it's just ONE groove the spirals in from the outside towards the center of the disc). I still have plenty of old vinyl LP's that I never play because the cd versions that I have sound so much more realistic in so many ways - dynamic range, overall distortion, NO distracting hiss/pops/clicks; EASY maintenance - there's really just no contest as far as I'm concerned.
This is why I started getting serious about collecting CDs about 5 years ago. Back then you could buy them for $1 each (or less) from thrift stores. Since then, the prices have crept up to around $2-$3 each. Even though the price difference between CD and vinyl LPs is still hugely tilted in the CD's favour, this price gap will keep narrowing as more people go back to CD. Vintage CD player prices have also gone up over this time too. Admittedly from a very low base, but the days of finding a nice 1980s CD player in a thrift store or in e-waste for peanuts is drawing to a close too.
Never knew they went away in the first place. It's nice to have a physical copy of the music, and with a CD I can rip the audio onto a computer, put the files on my phone and listen to them anytime I want. I could never comprehend streaming. Why keep paying money for something you don't even own a copy of?
In most cases, I use Spotify to determine which CD or vinyl should I collect, thats how streaming worth for in my opinion, and I love to collect music I loved
They are consummately durable. A forty-year-old CD sounds just as good today as then. Classical CD's are dirt-cheap because many of the original owners (classical music has always skewed elderly) are dying off. Credible playback is cheap, contrasting to the expensive turntables, tonearms, and cartridges that one needs to avoid tearing up the vinyl disk. You can get adequate sound from an old cast-off DVD player available cheaply at a thrift store. The recording industry never successfully pushed an improved technology like Blue-Ray disks that might offer wider range of sound or more detailed sound. The CD is the top-quality medium that most people have. By the way -- analogue recording that prevailed into the 1970's was a literal art of engineering; early digital recording was often done on veritable autopilot.
The most I've spent on a vinyl record was $120. It was graded NM/VG+ (conservative grading). A few years later, that same record now goes for $325-400 now at VG-VG+ lol. I much prefer CDs anyway.
It's good to play and own CDs you have purchased, individuals tracks or full albums that you can own the streaming platforms are too expensive & only provide a loan. Your able to skip & reply tracks much more easily ...plus once purchased it's yours.
The potential technical quality from the music on a CD can be outstanding. Unfortunately after the nineties, the quality was pretty bad due to dynamic compression etc.
I saw a video where someone compared a remastered version of "Nevermind" by Nirvana with the original 1991 pressing, and the difference was night and day. The remaster sounded like a noisy unlistenable mess. Tracks with quiet and loud parts were the worst affected i.e. "Lithium", "In Bloom".
I will always buy the CD. Even as a vinyl and cassette collector! But, I've recently purchased a load of first edition Todd Rundgren CD's from 1987 and they apparently have disc rot. Mine, so far, are fine and have not shown any symptoms, but it is a worry. They were repressed, so I could buy those versions, but, they were secretly EQ tweaked, whereas the ones I mentioned before are the closest to the original masters. Anyone I know listening to this will be very confused, I'm sure! *EDIT* two discs that have arrived since don't play at all.
CD rot, or bronzing, occurred quite a bit for CDs made by, for example the PDO plant in Swindon in the UK between 1988 to 1992 or thereby ... something to do with the "stuff" used on the printing side of the CD and also the quality of the seal meaning the playing material was exposed to atmosphere... nothing the user could control...affected a range of labels/ releases like Polydor, CBS,
Continued... for a period you could contact PDO and they would replace a bronzed CD you sent with a "newly manufactered" one (I did this for Pat Travers' School of Hard Knocks CD and BBC Radio 1 in Concert CD of John Miles ... CDs (when not bronzing) still work for me though I do like accessing HiRes via Qobuz or BluRay ... also using Qobuz with USB Audio Player Pro App on Android. Sold off my vinyl (1,000 + LPs) except for a handful of "keepers" (Concert for Banhladesh box set, signed Wishbone Ash, Nils Lofgren, etc) ... vinyl sleeves etc were great to read but vinyl was a pain to play... CDs just worked (and still wotk) better... and I enjoy collecting the box sets of classic artists... CMcG, Aberdeen Scotland.
@@calummcgregor3662 Also, Discovery Systems had an audible disc rot and other disc rot type of patterns in their manufacturing as they manufactured CDs at too cheap a price (they pressed a lot of radio CDs and also lots of Contemporary Christian Music CDs), and Nimbus's early CDs with the sticky label which if you try and clean the CD, you can remove the label, exposing the top layer and destroying the disc.
Pedantic Police here ... SACD (and DSD64 specifically) is not 96khz/24-bit. It is a 2.8Mhz/1-bit sampling rate/bit depth. The 64 comes into play as 2.8Mhz is 64x the CD's 44.1khz sample rate. CD is PCM (pulse code modulation) while SACD/DSD is PDM (pulse density modulation). Also, while the shiny discs do look the same, SACDs have a mark on them indicating their format (as do the jewel case, too).
many years ago i used to say i could not hear a difference between CD and SACD i replaced my "all in one" amp. and damn it was like night and day. If i can find a SACD copy of an album i want that's an instant purchase to me, so its totally accurate what you are saying the CD / SACD player is a vital product but it will never be better then what comes later on in the audio chain, cables, DAC / amp matters just the same and i would recommend replacing the curtesy cables that are included. these days i have my own streaming server where there is only lossless and DSD, some say there is an audible difference between a physical CD and a lossless CD rip and even with my pretty high end setup i have yet to notice it. I totally agree with older releases sounding better then remasters on most occasions i do wish we could go back to the old Dynamic range before the "loudness war" Great video good information to people who are starting out!
My family has always been into physical media - my late father had a VHS collection numbering about a hundred tapes. I grew up watching VHS tapes as a young kid in the late 1980s, through the 1990s and then once the 2000s arrived (2002 to be exact) I started collecting DVDs - my absolute favourite format. I converted my VHS tapes to DVD and now have about 2000 DVDs. There is something about DVDs that makes them special - particularly when watching films made pre-1997 (the date DVDs hit the market), where the films were shot with actual film (or in some cases directly onto VHS video) gives off a certain atmosphere that digital film stock films lack. The best films to watch on DVD are those made from the 1980s, regardless of the print quality, as this format gives 80s films their best airing. 1990s films come a close second.
5:28 Notice AAD logo .... so its basicly a record or tape to a digital disc, with the hiss, its not even a ADD disc ? 7:35 ADD disc atleast some sound desk equalisaton done so hopefully less hiss to CD.
You will often see SACDs from classical music labels. They're generally hybrid, which means they work like a CD on a normal player. The SACD format uses a completely different DAC technology that is actually only 1 bit, but at a very high frequency. Sony is probably the biggest manufacturer of SACD players. 8:53 The 24/96 PCM sound thing isn't anything to do with SACD, but actually on DVDs (including some DVD videos marked LPCM - not just DVD audio) and blurays.
I don't know if CD ever really went away. They were the last physical media for music and I've always seen them in stores, unlike vinyl which was pulled from stores in the 90s.
I rarely if ever see people use old formats so I doubt any comeback claims. They may not go away completely for quite some time they are all but forgotten except to the niche crowd that continue to use them
@@paulbrower3297 I agree! As from a couple of years, say up to three years ago, the Compact Disc is a very narrow area of the aisle in Wal-Mart. At Best Buy from at least a year ago, CDs that were still being sold in a wide section have disappeared! Today Management is ignorant about some consumers wants, and preferences.
Before I became a huge CD fan, the old vinyl era was over and I transitioned from vinyl to CD via the cassette that I never liked. But I have never stopped buying CDs since the early 90's. I don't like the jewel boxes as much as I like the digipack and do not miss the horrible scratching noise made by vinyl records. Ok the vinyl covers were nice to have a 12" x 12" sleeve but LPs are bulky and obviously I can't play them in my car! I would recommend to either buy a BOSE CD player with amazing built-in audio or get a good set of bluetooth wireless speakers and play your Cds from your PC.
I never stopped buying CDs. I don't buy as many as I did 20 years ago, but still a few discs per month. Streaming is great for finding new music, and if I really like something, I just go ahead and buy the CD.
If they truly ARE making a comeback, record companies should put them back in jewel cases with decent booklets. I'm sick of nearly every new album I buy coming in some bullshit cardboard fold out pack. Some are just an open sleeve and the disc can just fall out the back! They don't fit in racks properly, the corners wear out in no time no matter how careful you are, and just pushing the disc in the cardboard sleeve can easily scratch it. I have CDs I bought 35 years ago, when they were all in decent protective jewel cases. They still look brand new, because I look after them, and so do the original cases!
I agree, Sarge! I can't actually understand why there are music collectors who complain about the jewel boxes for a Compact Disc! A jewel box is supposed to protect a CD as well as possible; and for me it does so very well.🔉🎼🎵🎶
It's ironic. First we went from vinyl to cd, because "the sound was so much better" we were told. In reality, the cost of production was way lower and the gains were higher. The extra price was warranted by "the better sound". But then streaming came and the digital format proved to be the key for musicians to bypass the music recording industry altogether. So then the industry told us, "well, actually vinyl sounds so much better, it's ... warmer", so that now we buy vinyl again. The production cost is high but so is the retail price - it's worth the warm sound isn't it?
Hey, remember, DVD and Blu-ray players play CDs as well. Most of them have digital coaxial or optical TOSLINK outputs so you can hear pure digital from your A/V receiver and hifi speakers. Use a mini LCD monitor instead of huge TV as the heads-up display when using the remote. No need to have to scrub ebay for an old 90s CD player deck. Hope that helps.
@@afriend9428 My knowledge only extends to disc players. I've never played video games as an adult. They give me migraines. Besides, I don't have the time.
Always had CD's. Still own every single disc I've received and bought since getting my first one for my 10th birthday in 1995. I still own that one too. A compilation of 12" extended mixes of 80's songs
This is great news. I’ve been a collector of funk and soul music since the 1970s. I always tell my grandkids whether it’s vinyl tape or cd ,it’s the same music. Vinyls can sound like snap crackle and pop. Tapes eventually twist and chew up. However the CDs give the purest clearest best sound by a country mile. CDs are as clear as water compared to vinyl and tapes. I’m 100% a cd man.
The CD Storage Rack I use (affiliate link) : amzn.to/35pmTbP
I have two of these. I drilled holes in them and hung them on the wall.
No Definitely Maybe or Whats the Story from Oasis...?!? Yeah, that CD stack ain’t legit. At all.
Are they coming back? Never left my life since 1988! I’m still buying new and hoovering up used and early pressings. I’ve a massive collection.
I agree, vinyl is getting very expensive. I have a lot of that too!
@@KRAZEEIZATION It suck though that many car companies are not making CD players anymore.
@@cindysue5474 Modern cars are rubbish so it doesn’t matter!
I never left the CD format. Being buying them since 1988. Have so many. CDs rule.
DAMN RIGHT, BUBBA!!!!
Since 1983👍🤘🤘🤘
I've been buying CD's since 1984, and I still have all the CD's I bought. Never got rid of any. I love my CD's.
I never stopped buying tapes or vinyl.
Absolutely. CD FOR EVER!
I love collecting CDs. It bugs me when new songs or albums are released only on digital. If I can't stuff a disc onto a crowded shelf to collect dust, what's the point?
If anything is only released digitally, I will not buy it.
Amen to that. Friends & Family (generally the younger members) look at me like I’m crazy. I bought myself a few of the recent Beatles box sets for Christmas, vinyl and CDs versions, and they were all like, can’t you just listen on Spotify or Tidal?
No fun in that…..
i agree lol
@@BoB4jjjjs you can always download it as all ,using piracy or pirate bay torrents just to recorded it into wave in a cd it sounds ok
@@RUfromthe40s Yes, I know I could, there are apps to do it from TH-cam. However, I would rather it was top quality, as I listen a lot on headphones. When using headphones, the slightest defect is very noticeable. However, I do copy CDs for use in the car, or at least I used to. Leaving paid for CDs in the sun is not the best idea, but a copied one, well, just burn another.
I know there are apps that you can download to Mp3, fine for the car, but for headphones, not so much!
My old car used to play Mp3 from CDs, so I could cram a lot onto one CD. Convert the CD to Mp3 file, then burn to CD.
My new car does not have a CD player, I find it a bit irritating! 😞
I'm old enough to remember when CDs were first released, it was amazing because there was no surface noise, no cracks, pops like a record, no tape hiss, no need to worry about Dolby at all, it was a perfect size and looks great when you have a lot in your library.
I'm with ya. I bought my first player (a Discman... all I could afford as a high school senior in '86/'87) and my first cd purchase in 1986 was Honeymoon Suite's "The Big Prize" because it was the only DDD disc in the store, and I wanted to hear what full digital sounded like. It was blissful. Over the years, I have accumulated about 2000 CDs, many of which are unplayable today because I didn't treat them right. I will say this... in recent years I have built a respectable 2 channel listening space and have begun to buy more vinyl, and on a proper rig, there is some charm in the sound from records that I missed from the cleanliness of CDs. Not the pops and crackles, but on recordings that were engineered for vinyl rather than for CD, because there is a degree of compression when engineered for CD, and the vinyl has a sound that I can only describe as "air" since I lack the vocabulary to say it more eloquently. Picking vinyl is a tricky endeavor these days. Anyway, CDs are still very much in my crosshairs, and I still love reading through the liner notes.
Yeah but you end up living in a record store. Rip 'em to flac, bung them on a server (Raspberry Pi running OMV with a USB drive will do), you have them instantly wherever you are.
@PrinceWesterburg I felt that way about 20 years ago. When being able to have anything at the touch of a button was new and seemed like treat. These days, with Spotify, there's no need to rip music anymore. It's true that streaming quality isn't the same, but it's darn good and sounds just fine on most playback equipment. Also, it can be fun to look through all the CDs and records and be reminded of music you may have forgotten about.
@@matthewpeterson3329 Honeymoon Suite: The Big Prize wasn't my first CD, but it was the first CD I got as a birthday present (along with Depeche Mode: Music for the Masses) in 1992, on my 17th birthday. The Big Prize has really stood the test of time - I ripped it to MP3 many years ago and it's been on every one of my devices, right back to my first Zune in 2008 (I made it abundantly clear I didn't want an iPod even though they were more popular and ultimately won out). But I still prefer to have CDs as much as possible.
@@mysticwolf75 Awesome. I also bought a Zune in 2008 and returned it about a week later. I just couldn't make it work, which is most likely because I am technologically inept.
As a musician, I still market my music on CDs. The sound is much clearer than a stream, plus fans have something tangible. The photos, booklets and graphics are something a stream doesn't have. In addition, I have been collecting CDs since 1988 and I still buy them today. Currently, I own 2700 CDs and I have no plans on dropping this format. Besides, when was the last time someone had asked to see someone's "streaming" collection? Long Live the CD 💿.
the sound quality can be solved with just getting flacs or even just 320kbps mp3 files
Arghh! a musician, I've been a DJ since 1976 and I just want to say that I totally 💯agree with you. Bet you thought I was going to slag you off, not a bit of it. Nice to see musicians and DJ's agreeing on something ha! I have to confess I rip my cd's and work from hard drive (320kbs) I have no intention of ever stopping buying these babies. Downloads are OK but you just don't get that physical buzz.
new cds have the same characteristics with streaming, at least new greek cds!hard bass, closed sound, normalization with flat waveform that surpasses the ceiling, loudness so much with gain at 98-99. It's a pity that cds have not the sound with older cds before 2010.
@@vinylmastersgr1036 you do realize that all of these factors have nothing to do with CDs but with the mixing and mastering process and the hardware music is being played. it's not like Vinyl which is analog media. CDs store digital data
@@kxdsh How do you know what bitrate he is using? Ripping CDs to WAV is the best way to go. FLAC also works but CDs share the same bitrate as WAV which means better compatibilty. Stay away from those lossy crap. The sound quality can be solved if he is playing uncompressed audio files using good digital to analog convertors.
It’s truely amazing how CDs are still being sold over 40 years after release! I collect them and have a Sony Mini Hifi system from the early 2000s and I think they sound great. It’s so refreshing to not get caught up with ads and other crap filling streaming services these days. Just pure, high quality digital music. Happy that more people understand the value of CDs!
I remember buying my first CD player back and I want to say 1982 it was a Yamaha player I paid I think $450 back then which was kind of a lot of money in my opinion it's funny you say after 40 years the CD format is not that old compared to the vinyl format which goes Way Way Back
@@dobermanguy9437 yeah wow! That’s amazing do you still have the player? I guess there was no real successor to CDs when it comes to a physical format. You had things like minidisc and DCC but they never really saw home hifi adoption. I was born in the mid 2000s and I still used CDs up until around 2016 when Spotify started to become popular here in Australia
CDs first overtook vinyl in 1993 in UK. At that point, vinyl too had been going for about 40 years. Like CD, vinyl took around 10-11 years from being introduced to being the best-selling format.
is it a cmt cp11?
@@hello_mate8974 yes it was. Ended up building a new setup but my sister enjoys the CP11. Sounds pretty good given the price I paid. The rubber on the drivers on my speakers are worn though
The irony for those of us born a lot before 1997 is that we remember how intimidating the $11-$15 price tag of CDs was when CDs first hit the market (on average, new records were $5-7.)
i remenber $35, it dependend on how many stores existed in your city but in 93 ,prices did came down all over the world when they manage to find a cheaper material to produce cds ,only more sensitive compared to 80´s ones
in 82 to 84 a cd was enough to buy two vinil and a good cassette to record more music,till 93 i just bought 7 cds after was when prices came down and still thinking that cds were good sounding ,i bought many that i liked ,that never listen to them till today because they sound a lot worse than the vinil records i already had
that´s candyland not even special price cds had so low price and the cheapest cds were was in early 90´s 15 to 20 dollars and 7.50 special priced ones, normally they took the sticker where it said special price or others depending on the label and sold them as new releases
(€22 new album,in 2002)
11 to 15, I seen them (Some Elvis titles and 80's bands) for $35 for a single album in the late 80's
Most versatile and user friendly digital format ever created: no DRM, no lossy or propietary encodings, no BS. Just digital music.
5th like with ken wu
According to a guy who works with music, the CD is very compressed compared to the recording in the record studio. Because he said in the studio they work with 32 Bit. and they use it when creating a vinyl record they do not use a CD as a source
Not true sony has had copy-protected CDs even though those discs were not allowed to have the compact disc symbol. it was is a file on the disks that could cause you to have problems with your computer
Available music on HDTracks without DRM. according to their website
Already in the 80's, the record companies demanded a copy ban on DAT players. so you could only make a perfect digital copy of your CD. for a time, it was not even allowed to sell DAT in the United States. the record companies went to court
Love CDs. No matter what happens to your music collection; stored on a drive or loss of the music on a streaming service, CDs are tangible music you can actually hold in your hands with art work to enjoy when everything else crashes. Hope there's a returning trend by the music industry to start pressing CDs again.
Discs deteriorate don't forget that. So if you don't copy them at some point you will loose your music files
@@iorreneft correct, but where is the problem in dragging the files onto computer storage in original quality?
This way the music will survive forever and you can use it wherever you wan't without having to change cd's.
Yep, I'm a massive fan of physical media. Can't beat it. 🙌
Most Cd sound quaility is bad. Recorded to loud and way to many highs. Works well on crappy sound systems but sound like chitt on a good system.
@@jamesvw769 🤣😂🤣😂 no they don't, they sound absolutely amazing on a Technics set up.
I never stopped buying them. Nothing against any other formats. I stream, use vinyl and occasionally even cassette. CDs are my overall favorite.
I am a HUGE fan of of ANY physical media. And it's important we don't let it die! I'm a bit of a audiofile head to an extend, and I am currently using my CD-Rom drive in my desktop with EAC to rip them into WAV files. Sounds so amazing all together! Way better then the streaming platforms.
Rip them into FLAC or APE instead, they compress without losses (as in zip compression) and you don't have to have files so big as WAV, while retaining ALL the sound information bit by bit, meaning an exact audio copy of the original
@@pecmYea. I actually started doing the FLAC files shortly after I posted this comment. Thanks for the reply/tip anyways though!
Also physical media is something they can’t take away from you! As in the SpongeBob episode Mid Life crustacean they took that off of iTunes and also the streaming service and also Sony took away Mythbusters and Deadliest Catch from ppl who actually PURCHASED it because they lost the license for those showsso the ppl who spent so much money for it so if it’s important to me I mean very important physical is the way to go for me!
After listening to mostly streamed and compressed music for 5-6 years, going back to CDs has been a revelation. I love it. It’s so much nicer on the ears!
:^)
Lossless Audio is the ONLY way. Screw AAC and MP3. Besides that, CDs don't require internet connection.
CD's are good, but are the beginning of such compression. You're in for a genuine treat when you start listening to vinyl!
@@Scotty-P If you like some extra harmonical distortion, higher noise floor and an occasional pop then yes, go for vinyl.
The more expensive the turntable, the more it sounds like a CD.
@@KRAFTWERK2K6 There are literally dozens of blind listening tests on the net where people couldn't hear the difference between 256kbps or higher mp3 vs losless.
MP3 is perfectly fine.
Cd is the perfect median. You own the music, and if you take care of it it lasts a lifetime. The cd dumping of the last few years has been a bonanza for collectors like me. I've been buying favorites for 5-6 bucks....life is beautiful.
Where can you find some of these cds? Do you recommend finding the first issued cds?
@@JHulbert17 discogs ebay amazon local digital markets
Exactly - I just hope eBay prices don't raise on the back of TH-cam posts ( like this one we're all watching !)
@@JHulbert17
Discogs is fantastic for this
@@cactusjackNV sorry, I was curious
You nailed it on the head with your mentioning that a physical CD (or LPs and cassettes), if taken care of, is always available in our collections. While an artist can pull their music off a streaming service or the streaming service may even go out of business. I've been trying to drill that fact home with people who are supporters of streaming music over having CD collections. The point being, when you are relying on a streaming company to control of your music collection, your favorite music could disappear. You are renting access to your music with streaming. If that streaming service decides so and so's band is no longer worth keeping on their servers due to low listeners, they can delete that artist. With having a CD collection, you can go to your shelf and listen to that CD no matter if it is in print or is popular or not. During this pandemic, I have been buying tons of used CDs on Discogs at such fair prices. It can be a fantastic way to fill in missing albums in my CD collection and try music that I haven't thought of previously. Plus, buying physical media, especially directly from independent bands/ artists goes a long way to helping that artist keep making music and earn a living. Streaming royalties are generally rubbish. Streaming devalues music by making it completely disposable.
I found out last night that Apple can remove “your album “ from your own library also not just streaming. What you download from iTunes is technically a streamed copy and not an album I heard that years ago but didn’t really think about it but yes, the artist and album have been removed from iTunes Store and from my devices that are online, I still have the album because I use a digital audio player to listen to music not my phone but I have a cd of the artist which I had to import from Japan and that was to replace the cd I bought in the late 80’s which I gave to a Japanese girl who was a bit homesick, that one was bought in a major metro area in Australia in the country area I live in there isn’t a lot of international titles available.
Very well said, Shane.
When you own the physical media - you own the music.
@@ロクアンドロルしかない : I've never had that with iTunes, however, in the past I did experience that very thing quite often from Spotify - even if I'd physically downloaded the album to my device....!! 😳 NOT good!! 😩
All the same, I grew up when LPs and cassettes were the main way to buy music, and even though I enjoy digital downloads for the convenience, in 99% of cases, I have the original either on LP, CD, or Cassette as well, and still buying physical too.. No-ones taking THAT bastard away from me!! 😂👍🏻
i started again to buy cds or records after listening on some things i had just forgoten but one or two songs are great and to a cassette they go
CD's never went away , the sound quality is so much better than the streaming stuff and the SACD format with a good player is astounding.
Bullshit. Any decent streaming service offers 24 bit/96khz audio these days. Get a clue before embarrassing yourself next time.
That is totally true
The sound quality is technically better than vinyl as well, though space for cover art and text information is greatly reduced
@@ShamrockParticle You are correct. Even an old 16 bit Redbook from the 80's sounds better than vinyl
@@mikethebike7372 Yeah. If you were using a cheap 1980s piece of shit. Either you're deaf, or stupid.
I started re-collecting CDs about 5 years ago. Most of mine were originally bought in the late 80s and early 90s. A lot of my old favorite artists were still making new music, and that's when I rediscovered them. However, I don't actually listen to the CD live. I collect them in a box, each one in a protective plastic sleeve and in a box after I admire and rip them to music files. I play the "albums" from my computer through it's bluetooth to an inexpensive bluetooth receiver, and from my receiver I have old fashioned speakers plugged in, powered by the receiver. All the music programs for Andriod phones are pure awful, so I normally don't use my smartphone's bluetooth, except when away from home (I have a copy on my smartphone too). Those modern Andriod music programs are geared toward singles, not albums. But on my computer I easily organize them by artist, then albums, and I play the actual album, not single music files. I love it like that, just like playing a whole CD. The reason why Andriod music programs are pure awful is that the established cultural powers are hell-bent against albums and artists and want to hold them back to extent reasonably possible. Rock artists have been singing about them wanting to destroy ROCK music for generations now, and believe it or not, they're right. The entire music industry, including albums and CD labels, are all mutually dependent on one another, fully interdependent and interlinked. They way they successfully demolished most of Rock and music industry is cannibalizing the industry from within, most notably with itunes, and then the streaming music platforms. Teens that use to collect albums generations ago no longer collect, they and others have been streaming music. What that leads to is the habit of listening to songs till tired of it, then never listening to it again. One a streaming service lapses or goes out of business, then so to all those tunes. And, the tunes are saved in libraries that aren't album oriented. So everybody just forgets about the music after listening to fulfillment. Lots of teens who grew up in the early 2000s can't even remember the music they listened to, and they have zero access to the music they once bought. It's just forgotten music. However, teens from the 70s and 80s sometimes have enormous album collections (or CDs, tapes or 8tracks even). They periodically show them off, for instance a popular band, take Led Zepplin, they might show off their Led Zepplin IV album to youth from the current generation, then presto, they are hooked on those albums. That goes for GnR's Appitite, Metallica's Black album, Def Leppard's Hysteria, Aerosmith's 70s albums, and their comeback album 1987's Permanent Vacation (the last album Aerosmith did macho style with Steven Tyler's yak-yak-yak-yeow metal screamin'. After that they turned to soul rock with Tyler doing love squeels. Now, for folks who stream Aerosmith for example, all their music is blended together: 70s Rock, 80s Metal, 90s Soul Music, 2000s forward sweet love ballads, all blended together like stew. It's very similar to other artists that have been around for generations and making music all the while. The result: loss of their personality and growth and evolution as artists, they are now just a single photo snapshot in musical time. Not interesting for many. All things considered, there is less long term interest in artists because it's difficult to visualize them growing, so folks don't track them year by year because they figure "nothing ever changes, they are who they are and Ive already got their best songs streaming" so they don't track the artists. The music industry collapsed because it didn't sell music. It didn't sell music because streaming songs sold have zero collectable, as soon as the listener tires of the tune, they don't track the artists and forget about the songs. And, they only purchase whatever is on the radio, if that. Artists no longer made much money making new albums, so they didn't make new albums very often. The quality of music suffered, that added another reason to not collect music. The government got more involved in controlling the cultural aspects of music making and pumping billions$$ into controlling Rock radio stations, the music award industries and investing heavily in record labels, and this was all done without news coverage. As for their Front of Control: they used the PMRC to stick labels on albums with bad lyrics, all the while outside channels encouraged deviant outtrage on album. The result: an excess of album for the public to bemoan (that was step 1) . . . step 2, the public loses interest in collecting music. Now, today, we live in a world where the music industry was heavily injured by those actions. The public has suffered through a mega loss of quality music while the cultural powers patiently wait for the last rock bands and rock stars to completely die out. It's a long term project they are patiently engaged in: cultural engineering. As for me, I buy my CDs, collect them and save the media and cool booklets that come with them. I enjoy the music which as actually improved thanks to quality recording technology becoming exponentially more affordable. Even so, they bands I love are all now getting very old, and sadly, they are almost gone. It's up to folks to now stream music to STOP NOW, and START COLLECTING. They will enjoy it tremendously. And better yet, decades from now they will have something magnificent to share with upcoming generations, and they will all be mega shocked at the cultural changes [of the future] which we are yet to know about, but rest assured, the cultural engineers have it planned for them right now, with minor changes as they go along by the new powers that be . . . . As a result of all that, stereo equipment industries scaled back production as well, to a tiny fraction of equipment sell today. (that's why I use cheap computer equipment to rip CDs, much cheaper because the music industry was hit so hard) . . . the solution is: collect music on real media: CDs, albums, tapes . . please
I almost got rid of my CDs last year because I can stream Spotify through my Sony amp/Wharfdale speakers. But then one day I played a song on CD straight after listening to the streaming version and was bowled over by the difference in quality. The result was that instead of dumping my discs, I upgraded to a brand new Denon CD player. Then I bought a new Teac tape deck so I can make mix tapes from my CD/vinyl collection. I rarely stream anymore. Physical media sounds better to my ears and simply brings me more enjoyment. I hope more people in the future discover that they feel the same way.
...and there's no monthly fee, no one tracking my selections and making ridiculous "suggestions" as to what I might like, and no #$%^ ads!!
i use streaming for those days when it´s too cold and arrive from work completely wasted ,in a sofa i push my keyboard and listen to all ,instead of looking for in several shelfs filled with records and cds but when listening to music i like to hear all that was recorded and spotify isn´t that good but aceptable, making playlists it´s fine and easy but not all is there , around 2018 i remenber to record a minidisc with a playlist from spotify and well done again the md player for the car, the same with cassettes ,even crossfaded
Regarding the sound quality, especially as compared to streaming or mp3, I couldn't agree more. Those sources just don't deliver the dynamic range that really bring the music alive. I stream and I like the convenience of it, certainly, but I love having the CD's too.
Totally agree!! Same thing happened to me, was listening on streaming, and listened on CD and I was blown away! So much more power, and clarity!
I only stream to identify music I want to purchase on CD or vinyl.
I remember seeing CDs 💿 for the first time back in 1984 (they were originally introduced in 1982). I had started collecting LPs in 1974, enjoyed collecting them, but eventually sold off my record collection of over 3,000 LPs in 2001, basically because of space. I started buying CDs exclusively in 1989, and still collect them today. Long live CDs 🌈✌️💿 and physical music.
How much money did you get for 3k LPs? If I may ask :)
@@magnesiafrost1863 I sold 1,500 in 2001 for hardly anything. It was all punk and metal and at the time it wasn’t worth much. God I regret that now😂
never stopped buying CDs. i think they're the coolest music format. i am not really a vinyl person but everytime i see a colored vinyl records i wanted to collect them too haha
Dude, I started buying the odd vinyl I thought was cool over the years (collect mostly cds) but the crazy thing is, the vinyl ones have quadrupled in price. Some of them now over 400 bucks each! I'm sure I dont have a cd worth that
5:53 AAD: First letter means the content on the CD was recorded on analog. Second letter means the recording was MIXED in analog. Third letter means it was mastered in digital, which would obviously be the case for all CDs.
Anyone who was born before 2003-2004 definitely knows how important these CDs were and how it is irreplaceable, collecting is a lifestyle
I hope CD's don't get popular again so they don't become grossly expensive like vinyl
I’ve noticed at the local Walmart they were basically 4 or 5 bucks each. Those 4 and 5 dollar discs are now 9 dollars and up. Got a few thrift stores that I frequent. One place sells 10 cents each. The other a dollar each.
@@Lexy-O I disagree. If the popularity of CDs increase, the labels are going to increase the prices because people are willing to pay the higher prices and the same will happen in the second hand market.
Thanks to stupid videos from hipsters like this prices increase.
Exactly - it doesn't help when videos like this TH-cam post are put out there, eBay prices are already begin to rise.
It might be a good idea to replace your vinyl collection with CDs ASAP. Your right the price of CDs could sky rocket. CDs last longer and sound purer clear and better than snap crackle and pop vinyl.
The one thing about CD'S I wish that would go away is digi packs. They wear out fast and jewel cases are easy to replace.
I believe the digipacks are due to 1) cheaper to manufacture and 2) more environmentally friendly. There are bags special made for the digipacks if you want to protect them better.
@@ModernKaveman digipacks are not cheaper the materials used are expensive it was a try of giving importance to art cover that it got lost ,no one looks to covers or inlay pappers with diminished letters with lyrics that mostly seem litle black dirt on colour pages
@@ModernKaveman , I've got plastic bags for the digi covers but I still don't like them compared to the jewel cases.
Digipacks piss me off
Hard disagree. Jewel cases SUCK.
My very first cd was Madonna's Like a Virgin which I bought way back 1984. Still plays like a dream. Now I have around 2000 and I don't intend to stop collecting.
my first cd was a version of a doble lp from CCR "chronicle" that came out for what today is 7€ in a magazine than i bought also for 5€ the soft parade by the Doors, some say it´s a bad album but i like it since new and it sounds very good
Today's worth $25,Then it was $2.
That’s a lot of copies man
Mine was Green Day 21 century breakdown that I bought at Newbury Comics with the money I made while at Boarding school. Good times
Me too. I bought Like a Virgin, then all the other Madonna's album. And then i got my very first cd player (that i still have, and still run very good) the Technics Slp-220. I still remember the first moment when i putted the cd in the tray and pushed play. I cannot believe my ears...no hiss, no noise, only music. And during the pause...absolute silence! Fantastic!
I started buying cds in the late 80’s but never quit buying vinyl. Through the years i managed to get the best of both worlds while building a large music collection and i will continue to do so.
Something else to note is that I think the culture of streaming has really changed one's relationship to music compared to when people owned physical media. I grew up listening to tapes and then CDs in the 90s, and I always had my collection on hand. I would constantly look through my collection to see what I wanted to listen to, and was continuously being reminded of older stuff I had. With streaming, I think there's a tendency to forget stuff you liked in the past, cause it's not visually in front of you, so you tend to listen to whatever is new, and a lot of great music can start to be lost. I remember in 1996, looking through my CD collection, I would pick out stuff that I bought in 1992 or 1992 as much as the newer stuff, cause it was always visually and physically in front of me, and I don't think that's the same as with streaming. I'm sure there will be people getting back into CDs for nostalgia, or younger people romanticizing a past they were not part of (many who grew up in the 90s would romanticize the 70s), and there are plenty of real pros to CDs, like the sound quality, or the sleeve art, the physicality etc. but I think having a physical collection does affect the way you listen to music.
100% true. Interacting with objects- be it books, CDs, records - is entirely different from using digital media. Objects form a ‘story’ of sorts, and can lead you forward or back and make unexpected connections. Great analysis!
I still buy CD's regularly and have never stopped. I buy even more now than I did when it was the default media format.
I completely agree with you... CDs are coming back. I've owned vinyl since the 80s and still buy the odd album, but for about the past 6 - 12 months I've been grabbing CDs, largely at thrift stores and used stores where I'm getting them for 1 or 2 dollars each... I have a feeling these "dollar days" will come to an end...
Hopefully it won't follow the same path as vintage video games, but I suspect it will.
A few years ago you could get the most iconic CD's from thrift stores (op shops) for a couple of dollars. In 2022 it seems like that time has passed, most of the top content has long been harvested.
I'm paying about $4 per CD at a local record store (these are used) and it's just such a great deal.
My dad was the engineer who repaired the CD moulding machines at Philips DuPont Optical (PDO) in Blackburn, UK (that was later Polygram, Seagram, Deluxe etc).
The process came from the 12” LaserDiscs.
They made a lot of CDs for Polygram (as it was a Philips company) and they were very keen on stating whether the disk was “AAD” etc etc.
This was the factory that produced the infamous “bronzed” disks.
I had a summer job there carrying boxes about and they had a problem with a new auto-packing machine that was slightly crimping the libretti (which is what they called the paper inserts). They had a problem with the production of Anthrax “Persistence of Time” cd. I rushed out and bought it and yes, the machine that was causing trouble put some slight indentations on the booklet.
The CD is proudly bronzed too lol.
The factory was very proud of the product and employed lots of skilled people, despite the disk rot!!!!
My summer job was in the CD packing department and I was amazed by the quality control, even at this stage.
The first time I saw disc rot it was a classical disc that was in a joblot I'd bought. I thought it was some kind of cool bronze decorative effect!
Neat!
If you're buying used CD's, make sure to hold them up to the light to make sure it doesn't have CD rot. You'll notice pits and sometimes holes in the reflective layer that's sandwiched between the clear plastic. I've had a few like that.
CD rot only happens on really cheap mixed DJ CD's.
You're wrong on that.
CD rot also happens on dvd and bluray.
Does anyone know the cause?
@@rt3593 it happens because of cheap materials/ manufacture issues . Not every cd has it. My old cds do not have it but some of the new ones…
@@fraudsarentfriends4717 Nope. You have to be especially careful with CD's from the very first few years of the format, 83- 85 or so. They didn't have the manufacturing process down yet and a lot of CD's from that era are prone to rot. I speak from experience. I've run into quite a few discs with pinholes in them -- which itself is not always an indication of rot but it's still especially prevalent with CD's from that era.
CDs never went away. I've always been able to buy my favorite album on CD, even when streaming got popular. Yes, vinyl has made a comeback and I buy vinyl sometimes too. The thing that a lot of people have realized is that you don't own anything with streaming. Without an internet connection you have nothing. With a CD or vinyl, you always have that music.
I have always loved CD's. I have about a thousand CDs in my collection. I still buy them so in my book they never went out of style, and I'm glad that they are making a comeback, even though they never went away. 😁
that´s the truth never saw stores closed without cds, but the return of analog formats
And CDs will never disappear. From your collection and are easier to store then LPs..
And CDs take a long time to wear out. And if they get scratches it can be fixed..
It's such a buyers market right now, but, then again, I never stopped buying CDs. When you can get topnotch albums used for $1 on clearance at Half Price Books it just makes total sense. I have a world-class collection for a fraction of the cost of vinyl LPs. I've been buying them since 1984 when they were like $18 a disc. Don't pay anything close to that today.
Totally agree.
@@ontherhodes8088 I took thousands of vinyl LPs and Singles to the tip when I moved house, didn't have room for them and didn't have time to sell them on or pass them on to anyone! I was a bit upset, but a woman has to have a new house!! :-((
Every now and again I'll see a CD I bought back in the day for $15+ going for $1 at a Goodwill.
Yep. I never stopped buying CDs. I probably have 7-8000 right now - plus a few hundred LPs, hundreds of cassettes, a few 8-track and reel-to-reel.
Where are you finding good CDs for $1 at hpb? Most at my local one are in the 5-10 range
I'm 81 years young, and still rocking mainly in my rocking chair. Hi from Australia 😎🎶🎵🎶 I believe that all the best music is from the 60s and 70s.
Nice one. Greetings from a dinosaur in Ireland. Keep listening.
...and 90's
I agree, Justin; but I'm a couple of years younger than you so I prefer music from the 1960s to the end of the nineteen eighties.🔉🎼🎵
May I recommend to you a short-lived Aussie band called McPhee. They released only 1 album, in 1971 - self titled heavy psychedelic rock album. The lead singer, Faye Lewis.
Born in 1978. I caught the tail end of tapes. But when I was a teen the cd was it! First cd I bought. Nirvana unplugged. Haven’t stopped since!
I'm only 14 and I was caught in this trend of buying cds, I definetely have almost 200 now and I could see myself having loads and loads by the time I'm in my own place lmao. I'm glad they made a comeback
It’s great that CD’s are making a comeback. I have tons and tons of CD’s. I collect more Cassettes and Vinyl, but it’s nice to know that there truly is a market for all these physical formats. I’m happy CD’s and Cassettes are coming back stronger than ever.
For classical music, there is no substitute for CDs. In addition to greater dynamic range, CD prices can't be beat. In the past year, I have purchased entire catalogs of conductors, soloists, and orchestras from 1960s to the present for $2-$3 per NEW CD. For the price of 4 LPs, I can own 100 CDs.
Good point. In the battle between analogue and digital, your point often gets missed - likely because most people are buying rock, pop, or jazz.
I've had a bad case of "boxed-set-itis" over the past 10 years or so (only cured by retirement and living in a country with an abysmal postal system) and have bought dozens of boxed sets (total number of CDs I own is around 6,300.) By clicking 4 times over a period of a year or so, I was able to buy all of Herbert von Karajan's DG recordings, amounting to over 300 CDs. Not only are they a hell of a good price, it's very likely that even if I wanted to buy the albums, it would be near impossible to collect them.
For classical and pop and rock and all genres
Now the record companies usually have low dynamics on CDs. and the record companies think that audiophiles or people who like classical music buy music on another medium such as Hi-res or SACD or Vinyl. or maybe listening to Qobus or Tidal
Is there not a risk that the record company thinks that if you buy music cheaply, you will also buy a cheap stereo?
@@Andersljungberg CD with good mastering without compression is a top format. CD sound as a shit since loudness war has started in the past. But it's a good format.
Born in 69 I went from vinyl to cassette, back to vinyl for a brief period, and then went CD from about 1986 onward. Did dabble a little bit with SACD in the early 2000s. You just can't beat physical media. You have a lifelong back up that will never be converted into some subscription-based streaming BS. Storage is so cheap now, it is ridiculous. I can fit all my music on one USB flash drive. Although not as cool as LP cover art, still nice to have some artwork with your music. Recently I hauled out a lot of my CDs (I have hundreds) and finally categorized them and ripped to FLAC format. (side note: don't try this on one of those crappy USB-powered CD drives for laptops. Get a proper internal or AC powered external DVD drive) It's better quality than the MP3s you get off of Amazon. On my home system, which is pretty decent. I can hear the difference. Also agree with you about the "remasters". Sometimes they are a clear improvement if done right, but usually they just are cranked up to 11 and you actually lose some dynamic range.
There’s just something special about popping in a cd and just chilling in your room with the window open just smelling that fresh air
Where do you live?
The first CD I ever purchased was 'Are you Experienced' by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. I grew up in the era of cassette tapes, but I did outgrow that format and embraced CDs. I still collect CDs to this day and my Sony Discman is definitely a prized possession! I have a pretty large collection and I never intend to get rid of it. I bought quite a few CDs just a few days ago...CDs beat streaming for me, as I love the physical aspects of it! I only have a Spotify account to 'sample' albums of interest ;)
I rip my CD's to play on my Sony (Flash and 8gb) Player
Love my CDs and Always will.
For me CD never went away. Been buying most of my music on CD since 1992, and still do buy CDs till this day. While I've got a collection of iTunes downloads, I've never paid for a streaming service and don't intend to start. And I've been loving buying CDs for $1 - $5 on eBay or at thrift stores, but figure those days are likely coming to an end. Excluding niche formats such as SACD or DVD Audio, CD is still the highest quality format thats accessible to most people, and allows you to hear music the way it was meant to be listened to. Its yours forever (unless you sell, give away, or lose the disc, or it gets damaged of course), its a one time purchase with no ongoing fees, and since most people are getting rid of them, they're cheaper than ever. There's nothing but upsides to them in my book. :)
That Sony DVP-S9000ES DVD/CD/SACD player you showed is a fantastic unit! The analog section is incredible with high end audio grade capacitors and components. I'm surprised they are still affordable, even on eBay. Not many CD players built that well that are still reasonably priced.
It is indeed awesome! Got mine for $60 online 🙂
@@HiFiTurtle wow that was a fantastic deal! I paid a bit more, but still feel these are diamonds in the rough. How about all of that copper and the 30lb weight? It’s built like a tank!!
@@wal really well made, love the dust filters on the chasis cutouts too
@@HiFiTurtle Yea I haven't seen one for under $250 in a while. Most are asking $500+
@@wal i did bought one be cause i wanted to listen how better the SACD sounds and i kind of liked the sound but why didn´t they start to deliver all cds with 2 channel technology of SACD , i tried to listen with a av amplifier at a friends house but i really didn´t like the way it sounds with a surround system it´s kind of a curiosity but not what i expected to hear when this friend of mine startesd to say how incredible it sounds but i would prefer better two channel sound than a complete 7.something divided tracks on one stereo recording, i since a lot of years conect my t.v and some years later my video system to my stereo equipment and liked it that way it sound incredible, once a friend of mine after listening to a video he asked me if i had a DTS system that i don´t really know what it is ,i know it´s the sound type of the cinema i go to watch new movies but technically i don´t know how diferent is from surround patern(sorry but my english doesn`t go that far, in tech. explained). Regards
CD's do occasionally fail due to disk rot. Back them up by ripping them to wav or flac files on a computer, or better yet, make a disk image on your hard drive, and from this you can make a clone of the original disk to play in your CD player and keep in the original case when and if something happens to the original. Disk. Disc. Disque. I hate multiple spellings.
I made the transition from cassette and vinyl to cds when the format was released and I’ve only bought cds since. There is just something so satisfying about having a physical copy of the release with artwork etc like you mentioned. Even when downloads were at their peak if a physical copy of the DL was available I would buy it. IMO cds are the perfect format for collectors that do not have the vinyl bug. I did vinyl as a kid bc it was the only format available and have no desire to go back....long live CDs!
Why did you stop using cassette?
@@thatperson9292 because if you use cassette as a primary format the tapes/cassettes don’t have a long life span relative to albums and cds. The tape gets stretched or eventually eaten and then your out one of your favorite releases.
@@TJCombo67 all my tapes sound fine from late 70s on up. Especially all the old radio stations I recorded.
I came to CDs fairly late, around 1998 I think, just because growing up we simply couldn't afford to splash out on a CD player, not when we already had a faulty Amstrad Music Centre, with turntable, tuner and cassette deck. But once we finally got one I had no desire to go back to vinyl or cassettes.
About 12 years ago I got myself set up with a half-decent Denon system... Just a CD player, an amp and a pair of speakers for about £500, which is a third of what my mate paid just for his turntable. Despite all the money he's thrown at his system, I still think my CDs sound better than his vinyls.
Don't have to use too much volume before it starts BANGIN!
I have to correct you. SACD. it is not 24 bit. It is not PCM at all on SACD. SACD is DSD digital direct stream. a system with 1 bit so only two positions positive and negative. but extremely high sampling rate. which should give it more analog in character to the sound. and the sound can also be in true 5.1 sound, ie surround. SACD is still produced, for example, by mofi and analog production on Acoustic Sounds, there are currently 1390 SACD's. DSD is available in different levels. eg dsd 64 which means 64 times higher sampling than on a regular CD. DSD128 and DSD256 are also available.
You are correct, this guy don't know anything about CDs.
Been collecting cds for years, best format personally, got new and old ones, play them everyday without any problems
difference. I Been buying 8track tapes for longer than you been collecting cds.
I bought my first CD player and CD in 1983. Still buying CDs to listen to on commute (and on my home system, Transport)
Be aware that many "Remasters" are garbage over compressed trash (the 2018 Giles Martin Palorphone Beatles remasters are the exception THOSE are excellent)
CDs did disappear from stores for a while, but have recently made a slow comeback. I'm buying again. DVDs never lost momentum, and seem to have increased in number with old TV shows in compliation and old movies being rereleased.
The ℗ date on any musical medium (including vinyl) is the sound recording copyright date, and was first used in 1972. It shows when that particular recording was first mastered and released. CDs were not in general release until the early 1980s, and most of those early CDs used the same mastering tapes as vinyl or tape versions of the recordings to make digital masters. These may have been the original analog masters, or more likely copies of that original masters sent to various countries. Remastered CDs (or any other medium including downloads) are sound recordings that have used (if possible) the earliest generation master tape to make digital masters for duplication. During this process, noise reduction, equalization, compression, or other electronic adjustments may be implemented to make the resulting sound different than the original master. This constitutes a new sound recording that can be copyrighted with an updated ℗ date. That is the primary reason for remastering and re-issuing music every few years: to extend copyright protection for the owners of the recordings, not necessariy to provide improved audio quality. In fact, many remastered recordings sound worse, especially when excessive compression is used (check out "loudness wars").
I admire your enthusiasm for CDs, though I must point out one thing: the first compact disc was not manufactured until 1982, and not commercially released in Europe or North America until 1983. Therefore the Rainbow album that you show us from 1975 was a reissue from its very first release on CD, though that may have been the first CD version (for a long time it was not standard to put the year of release on CD reissues). And while the AC/DC CD from 2003 is indeed a remastered version (and a good sounding one in my opinion, as are the rest of the albums from that series) previous versions would also have been reissues from 1983 or later - even if the only date shown is 1980.
Anyway, again I'm glad that you and others are finally discovering (or rediscovering) the advantages owning CDs over streaming or vinyl.
I like Vinyl best, more spacial and depth of sound, but I can't play a record in a car, plus they would take up too much room. A stylus wouldn't last long with the potholes we have!
I think the CD is either from 1988 or 1982 looking at the code.
exexalien
On 1st October 1982 the first commercial compact disc, Billy Joel's “52nd Street,” was released in Japan.
@@coolduder1001 No, it was certainly not in 1982.
if you had a good turntable you would notice remastered or not the bad sound of guitars on any cd or maybe you never listened to the Lp that reproduces guitars perfectelly , and cd is the problem the DAT quality is much better but not as good as the main format ,the record and try a 70´s amplifier they have a proper phono input ,it´s ridiculous the phono stages in some expensive and modern amplifiers and those fluance or pr-ject are just bad players ,it´s the same of having a 50€ dvd player to play cds
Great to hear from lots of like minded people. I went early into CDs, in those days there wasn’t much available.
I remember they were $20 and quickly rose to $25. That was a lot of money in the early 80s! Taking inflation into account CDs are one of the few commodities that have actually reduced in price. Like many others have said, have picked up some great titles second hand for cheap in physical stores and on eBay. Love the thrill of the hunt. Have 1000+ and still growing.
I don’t use Spotify unlike so many people I know, as many have commented you just can’t beat owning the physical copy!
Well said, Paul.🔉🎼🎵
AAD, ADD and DDD labels disappeared in the early 90s. At first, all digital was considered "hi-fi". Today, an AAD would be considered the highest quality
7:42 you hit the nail on the head there. Although with some early CDs, they can almost go too far the other way.
I didn't know they'd gone away! I'm still buying and playing them same as ever.
you can't beat having a first time hearing of a great album on a personal CD player with headphones, CDs are the best
I've been collecting CDs since I was a kid and always will
Well this is good to hear considering I've never stopped using them!
The first commercial CD releases were in 1982 coinciding with the first commercial CD players hitting the market.
1975 is the original release of the album on the original analog formats and not when that CD reissue was pressed
Came to the comments to say the same thing. I have the exact same rainbow album on CD and I bought it in 1986 or 87.
Kept the vast majority of my CDs.
Still enjoy them.
That said, my hifi setup is amp, streamer, iPhone in, CD player, 3 head cassette deck, turntable, and minidisc player !
I like it all 😃
I still love hunting CDs in the thrift stores. But I’m super fussy about condition. Any scratches and I put it back, you will always find another, and that seems to mean I have good sounding disks.
mini disks sound so good and metal cassettes have a beautiful sound played loud. Same with super vhs. Used to record gigs with a super vhs. the sound strips are so wide its cd quality.
Absolutely CDs are coming back. Sure downloads are convenient but most cost more than CDs. And at Amazon you get the download for free with the purchase of most discs sold by Amazon. I always prefer to buy the CD.
I’m glad the cd’s are coming back, because there are CD players that have pitch controls, which I personally love. And from my point of view, the CD players are available in music stores, like Sam Ash & Guitar Center.
yes they never stoped selling cd players or cds so this comeback seems a play to make people buy cds because yesterday they were kind of forgoten but today it´s come back time , and pitch is comon on cd players since early 90´s so congratulations for using this function ,are you a dj?i worked with the first denon professional that the controls could be screwed to the top of the mixing table and the players in other place
@@RUfromthe40s Not really, but I’ve been playing cd’s since around the 1990’s.
@@edwincancelii2917 till 93 only bought 7 cds but as i was the owner of a radio station ,i had all the cds i could get and also worked as a dj for 35 years but i never used cds ,records and two sl-1200mkII were more practical
Yes, vinyl is making a comeback, but more expensive now than back in the day! I still buy vinyl, but mainly CDs. New and used.
In the SPARS code on a CD label (AAD, ADD, DDD, etc.), the second letter is actually for "mix" and the third is for "master".
XTC's "Nonesuch" was the only CD I ever saw that was DAD - I always wondered if that was just a joke on their part.
@@mysticwolf75 in reality most was AAD or DAD. Mixing was the last
thing to go digital.
I started buying CD's in 1988. They still play great. Get a Disc DR to revive your CD if it gets scratched. Compared to vinyl and tape, CD's are almost indestructable.
There are a lot of good buys at yard sales and flea markets. I've gotten decent CDs for $0.25 and even $0.10 each. It's a cheap way to build a CD base. I rip all my CDs in lossless to my HDD and have a 2 point back up system (PC and external drive) in case something happens to them. I can also easily convert things to different formats, making it easy to transfer to various media (phone, memory stick, even a mix CD). I use dbpoweramp tools to convert formats.
Each conversion affects the sound. and CDs today have very poor dynamics especially pop music. loudness war. People report that the same music in other formats may have better dynamics. It may have to do with the fact that people who buy music in other formats are expected by a more expensive stereo and value sound quality higher. what are the other formats response Hi-res and Vinyl or other types of media. such as the SACD
A second hand store chain in my area is selling used CDs for around $2 each.
CDs are a great source of uncompressed (bit wise) audio if you do your own remasters. Beware that some have been released more than once and some of the newer ones have dynamic range compression applied and even clipped waveforms. My advice is to find the oldest UPC code and get that one first. You can always normalize or add some compression if they are not loud enough but you can’t undo clipping, at that point it’s too late to fix it. Imports are also a good source of alternate versions and some sound better than the US release. You can then make what ever file format you like. If you want to go beyond remastering you can try full restoration and fix tape dropouts and glitches that existed in the analog master.
I know what you mean. I bought the digital download of Pat Benetar Greatest Hits-Remastered. Honestly, some of the tracks sound terrible. Remastered doesn't always mean better. I'd throw that out if I could find a vinyl or cd version of the "not remastered" album.
@@allenpamscofield The Van Halen CDs that are available now are a clipped distorted mess, no dynamic range at all. I had to get the old first releases off e-bay to get source that was even fixable. After I did the remastering on those and got the levels up to using all the bits they sound fantastic. It's amazing how many releases there are out there. For example there are at LEAST 9 different Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon CDs out there and they all sound different.
Yep. The Loudness Wars did more to ruin the reputation of CDs than anything else. I'd go for the earliest possible pressing, and I'd avoid later remasters like the plague.
You can't remaster anything without the master. I wish you people would stop calling your versions remastered they're not
@@ericschulze5641 OK, I'll call it "restoration". However, many "masters" no longer exist either lost in the Universal vault fire or just unplayable from time and poor storage. So a CD may be the best source still in existence. It's good enough for me to start with for my collection. Modern technology and fix almost any issue it has.
The very 1st. CD I bought was Wild Honey / Smiley Smile by The Beach Boys. (2 albums on one disc). Can't remember why because at that time I wasn't a super fan... an impulse I guess...but I was delighted by the thing. The second and 3rd. CDs that I bought were Grasping At Straws and Misplaced Childhood by Marillion. I still like the physicality of a CD.
Long may they continue.
I got rid of my cd player & bought a rega planar 3 to play my age old & some new albums. I put all my 300 cds in a box ready to sell at about 50p each but never got round to selling & stored in loft, but i did convert the cds to flac files for my pc first. Even so for some reason I could not refuse buying old cds still brand new from one of those £1 bargain shops, which confirmed cd was on the way out. Only 4 years on & cd's are reviving again but not only that I saw the marantz cd6007 latest new model had usb playing flac files as well so I had to buy it. Luckily I never eventually sold my cds so I still have a great collection & the best of ×3 formats cd, flac & vinyl now. Suddenly hard for me time find any of those £1 cds in those cheap shops anymore too. Yes cd is back.
SACDs are 1 bit with a resolution measured in megahertz. DVD audio discs are 24 bit with 96khz resolution. If I recall correctly, both have significantly higher dynamic range than red book CDs and many have multichannel audio which nearly every other format does not offer.
SACD is 24-bit DSD. It's a fantastic Music format. SACD was made for music where DVD was made for cinema and adapted to music.
I love the sound of the vinyl, but the CD is the most practical format for today’s world. The CD is more portable,smaller, recordable,more durable, and useable in cars. I agree with you on the AAD CD’s because when they remaster the analog CD’s the sound to me isn’t right. I love a CD recorder especially when it has 2 or more trays for CD dubbing. My happy medium is a good receiver, a good turntable and cartridge, a CD recorder with dubbing capability built in, and a carousel CD changer. I hope the CD comes back and Recorder decks become available again. The CD is a lot easier to handle and manage.
minidisc is more practical, litle, protected by it´s casing and still digital, i still record cassettes but also record minidiscs ,for the car it´s the best
@@RUfromthe40s I see your point. The minidisc would be better for car and portable use. As they are smaller and are better protected due to being in a case. Why they didn’t market them better I don’t know.
@@tonyperek7292 they tried but sony wanted to much money for the other brands to own the format, other brands did developed a diferent system of playing atrac files but too late , i did start to use mds because they were almost ofered, the high-end deck from pioneer in mint condition did cost me 20€ ,for the car 50€ from sony and have hundreds of mds that i recorded that i use to buy 20 md for 5€ from sony or tdk .Kind of forced to use them , a good cassette deck around 1.000€ ,tdk sa-x 2 cassettes 4.50€ ,later bought boxes of 10 for 10€ because i had a ct-959 from pioneer that also bought in mint condition for 40€ in 93 but had a ct-737mkII(90) from pioneer and drm-800 from denon since 1989 and several older ones, regards
I love the ease of use of CDs and the fact that I can use it in my home or car with no fuss. The sound quality is exceptional if you get a well mastered one. They remain a musical sweet spot for me.
Well mastered is key. And also rare. As CD players became cheaper and more ubiquitous, the mastering and loudness wars made everything sound like trash.
Great video!
2 things to add to this...
Really good CD players can be had at thrift stores for around $20, and if they are in good physical condition and relatively clean, including inside the CD drawer or platter itself, (if a carousel type), then that usually indicates that it was taken good care of by its original owner, and therefore should probably still perform and play perfectly, (always test it in store before buying if it's used), and so used CD players can be a really great value! In my decades of experience with used/vintage/thrift store gear, I usually find that most Sony brand CD players are usually most commonly still in working order...
Other brands aren't quite as "die hard" reliable in the used market, from what I've noticed, however, there ARE exceptions to this of course! (As I said earlier; always test in store before buying if it's a used CD player!)
One other thing to mention is...
THE "LOUDNESS WARS", which (negatively) affected quite a few new album releases on CD, especially (and very unfortunately), in the Pop, EDM, and Hip-hop genres, and mainly only since 2010 or 2012, when I started to really notice some newer album releases on CD were starting to sound kind of "harsh" or sometimes even "saturated" or distorted, (Billie Eilish comes to mind unfortunately, which was very disappointing, because her music and voice and style overall is great, but her first major release album, "When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go?" especially, was majorly distorted in certain songs to the point of occasionally not even being able to understand her vocals/lyrics in certain musical passages where the bass was too strong for the compressor to work properly), (luckily her newer album "Happier Than Ever" was a slightly better sound quality recording overall, except in 1 or 2 songs which were still too loud), but anyway, my point is; that the OVERUSE of EXTREME levels of compression in many more recent albums, where the ENTIRE album is pretty much at the MAXIMUM recording level for CD, (which is actually extremely high, even better than other formats, but still), when the producer or masterer turns the levels on EVERYTHING ALL THE WAY UP TO THE ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM in order for the overall album to sound as LOUD and "impressive" (at the very first few seconds of listening only), but then if you actually listen to the entire album from beginning to end, you end up with "ear fatigue" or maybe even a headache sometimes, which is VERY irritating AND it's totally UNnecessary! (For recording "professionals" to do this!)
That's one reason you had mentioned that oftentimes the older or original release of an album sounds better than the newest "remastered" edition of it. That's not always the case, but if it is that way, then most likely the newer version of said album uses a much higher level of compression than the original recording did, therefore bringing the overall levels of every part of the song up closer to the maximum threshold of (clean) recording onto a CD, and if that point is ever exceeded, even for a split second, then it sounds distorted or at least very harsh on the ears.
Older/original CD pressings of albums before 2010 really didn't do that, especially not as a common or intentional thing, like the (disgusting) recent "LOUDNESS" trend is, so the overall presentation of an older album may seem at first like it's not quite as LOUD or "impressive" (among the very first listen), as a newer album or version might, however, that overall lower recording level is MUCH easier and more enjoyable to listen to long term or even over the length of the entire album because it wasn't stressing out the format or the equipment, and therefore it still left some room for it to "breathe"! (a.k.a. "headroom"... Look it up. That's way too long of a topic to go into here!) Doing that increased the overall dynamic range of the music, the difference from the loudest to the softest passages, and therefore made it much more listenable overall.
If one ever gets a standalone, component style CD recorder, (i.e. not just one on a computer), and ever plays around with making analog to digital recordings of tapes, vinyl, streaming, etc. onto CDs, and plays around with the recording level enough, then you will know to never let the levels go above the "0dB" maximum into the "clipping" threshold, (i.e. never lighting up the "clip" light), or else your music will sound like crap! It definitely sounds exactly like the original or source IF you keep the recording levels below that point, but once you go above it into digital clipping, then you will immediately know it because then the recording will sound like garbage! Lol! (Never do that again!)
The LOUDNESS WARS though, through the OVERUSE of EXTREME levels of compression, makes too many brand new album releases on CD sound harsh and irritating, and unfortunately sometimes even to the point of being almost unlistenable. I really hope that "trend" dies out in popularity and the recording companies start respecting the CD format again, properly utilizing its strengths, while always taking into consideration its "limitations"... "Limitations" that are really only that if the format is grossly abused in that way. (Of recording way above its "safe" dynamic limits of "0dBFS" or 96dB of dynamic range, as mentioned in this video)... Which is PLENTY of range, (MUCH more than vinyl BTW), but only IF it is fully utilized properly, by recording onto the CD WITHOUT totally maxing out EVERY part of the music at ALL times!
Anyway, "rant" over, lol! Anyone who starts getting into the CD format, especially after being "limited" by the overall poorer sound quality of MP3 and/or even most streaming services, will be very satisfied with their music on CD format! It's the overall easiest (physical format) to store, manage long-term, and find used anywhere and everywhere (any thrift store, garage sale, pawn shop, flea market, etc.), VERY wide variety of genres and artists, and for extremely cheap prices too, sometimes as cheap as 10/$1, and regularly (used) for as low as $1 per CD album. (And brand new releases on CD are also still a reasonable $8-$16 or so when first released and on sale)... Plus, if buying used ones, you can just quickly LOOK at the back/underside of the disc to see its condition, and if it's in relatively good shape then it's guaranteed to still play perfectly, which is really cool...
Enjoy your collecting!
If you prefer vinyl, then go ahead and listen to your pops and clicks and RIAA equalization while having to fastidiously keep the groove clean (yes, NOT "Grooves" - it's just ONE groove the spirals in from the outside towards the center of the disc). I still have plenty of old vinyl LP's that I never play because the cd versions that I have sound so much more realistic in so many ways - dynamic range, overall distortion, NO distracting hiss/pops/clicks; EASY maintenance - there's really just no contest as far as I'm concerned.
💿 CDs and DVs never went away.
I still have my cassette and records too.More reliable than online files🤗
This is why I started getting serious about collecting CDs about 5 years ago. Back then you could buy them for $1 each (or less) from thrift stores. Since then, the prices have crept up to around $2-$3 each. Even though the price difference between CD and vinyl LPs is still hugely tilted in the CD's favour, this price gap will keep narrowing as more people go back to CD.
Vintage CD player prices have also gone up over this time too. Admittedly from a very low base, but the days of finding a nice 1980s CD player in a thrift store or in e-waste for peanuts is drawing to a close too.
Never knew they went away in the first place.
It's nice to have a physical copy of the music, and with a CD I can rip the audio onto a computer, put the files on my phone and listen to them anytime I want. I could never comprehend streaming. Why keep paying money for something you don't even own a copy of?
In most cases, I use Spotify to determine which CD or vinyl should I collect, thats how streaming worth for in my opinion, and I love to collect music I loved
They are consummately durable. A forty-year-old CD sounds just as good today as then. Classical CD's are dirt-cheap because many of the original owners (classical music has always skewed elderly) are dying off. Credible playback is cheap, contrasting to the expensive turntables, tonearms, and cartridges that one needs to avoid tearing up the vinyl disk. You can get adequate sound from an old cast-off DVD player available cheaply at a thrift store.
The recording industry never successfully pushed an improved technology like Blue-Ray disks that might offer wider range of sound or more detailed sound. The CD is the top-quality medium that most people have.
By the way -- analogue recording that prevailed into the 1970's was a literal art of engineering; early digital recording was often done on veritable autopilot.
The most I've spent on a vinyl record was $120. It was graded NM/VG+ (conservative grading). A few years later, that same record now goes for $325-400 now at VG-VG+ lol. I much prefer CDs anyway.
It's good to play and own CDs you have purchased, individuals tracks or full albums that you can own the streaming platforms are too expensive & only provide a loan. Your able to skip & reply tracks much more easily ...plus once purchased it's yours.
The potential technical quality from the music on a CD can be outstanding. Unfortunately after the nineties, the quality was pretty bad due to dynamic compression etc.
On point,Unfortunately the remastering of older titles has ruined the music with the excessive compression.
I'm very old but love my CD collection. Does this apply even to brand new recordings? Is the quality that bad?
True, if possible seek 80s issues of classic albums... sounds 100X better than the "Remastered" issue
I saw a video where someone compared a remastered version of "Nevermind" by Nirvana with the original 1991 pressing, and the difference was night and day. The remaster sounded like a noisy unlistenable mess. Tracks with quiet and loud parts were the worst affected i.e. "Lithium", "In Bloom".
@Nicholas yes mastering of course, and the production of the album but 9/10 the ‘80s issue will have better dynamics…
I will always buy the CD. Even as a vinyl and cassette collector! But, I've recently purchased a load of first edition Todd Rundgren CD's from 1987 and they apparently have disc rot. Mine, so far, are fine and have not shown any symptoms, but it is a worry. They were repressed, so I could buy those versions, but, they were secretly EQ tweaked, whereas the ones I mentioned before are the closest to the original masters. Anyone I know listening to this will be very confused, I'm sure! *EDIT* two discs that have arrived since don't play at all.
Disc rot is pretty rare, usually caused by environmental factors like leaving CDs in direct sunlight or exposing them to harsh cleaning chemicals
Disc rot is even more rare on properly handled stamped discs made from 2000 on.
CD rot, or bronzing, occurred quite a bit for CDs made by, for example the PDO plant in Swindon in the UK between 1988 to 1992 or thereby ... something to do with the "stuff" used on the printing side of the CD and also the quality of the seal meaning the playing material was exposed to atmosphere... nothing the user could control...affected a range of labels/ releases like Polydor, CBS,
Continued... for a period you could contact PDO and they would replace a bronzed CD you sent with a "newly manufactered" one (I did this for Pat Travers' School of Hard Knocks CD and BBC Radio 1 in Concert CD of John Miles ... CDs (when not bronzing) still work for me though I do like accessing HiRes via Qobuz or BluRay ... also using Qobuz with USB Audio Player Pro App on Android. Sold off my vinyl (1,000 + LPs) except for a handful of "keepers" (Concert for Banhladesh box set, signed Wishbone Ash, Nils Lofgren, etc) ... vinyl sleeves etc were great to read but vinyl was a pain to play... CDs just worked (and still wotk) better... and I enjoy collecting the box sets of classic artists... CMcG, Aberdeen Scotland.
@@calummcgregor3662 Also, Discovery Systems had an audible disc rot and other disc rot type of patterns in their manufacturing as they manufactured CDs at too cheap a price (they pressed a lot of radio CDs and also lots of Contemporary Christian Music CDs), and Nimbus's early CDs with the sticky label which if you try and clean the CD, you can remove the label, exposing the top layer and destroying the disc.
Pedantic Police here ... SACD (and DSD64 specifically) is not 96khz/24-bit. It is a 2.8Mhz/1-bit sampling rate/bit depth. The 64 comes into play as 2.8Mhz is 64x the CD's 44.1khz sample rate. CD is PCM (pulse code modulation) while SACD/DSD is PDM (pulse density modulation). Also, while the shiny discs do look the same, SACDs have a mark on them indicating their format (as do the jewel case, too).
Glad I kept all of mine and the boxes 😊. I still prefer vinyl but I like CDs too. Downloading just isn’t as fun for me.
many years ago i used to say i could not hear a difference between CD and SACD i replaced my "all in one" amp. and damn it was like night and day. If i can find a SACD copy of an album i want that's an instant purchase to me, so its totally accurate what you are saying the CD / SACD player is a vital product but it will never be better then what comes later on in the audio chain, cables, DAC / amp matters just the same and i would recommend replacing the curtesy cables that are included. these days i have my own streaming server where there is only lossless and DSD, some say there is an audible difference between a physical CD and a lossless CD rip and even with my pretty high end setup i have yet to notice it.
I totally agree with older releases sounding better then remasters on most occasions i do wish we could go back to the old Dynamic range before the "loudness war"
Great video good information to people who are starting out!
My family has always been into physical media - my late father had a VHS collection numbering about a hundred tapes. I grew up watching VHS tapes as a young kid in the late 1980s, through the 1990s and then once the 2000s arrived (2002 to be exact) I started collecting DVDs - my absolute favourite format. I converted my VHS tapes to DVD and now have about 2000 DVDs.
There is something about DVDs that makes them special - particularly when watching films made pre-1997 (the date DVDs hit the market), where the films were shot with actual film (or in some cases directly onto VHS video) gives off a certain atmosphere that digital film stock films lack.
The best films to watch on DVD are those made from the 1980s, regardless of the print quality, as this format gives 80s films their best airing. 1990s films come a close second.
streaming is perfectly fine for the masses but true music fans purchase/collect media.
5:28 Notice AAD logo .... so its basicly a record or tape to a digital disc, with the hiss, its not even a ADD disc ?
7:35 ADD disc atleast some sound desk equalisaton done so hopefully less hiss to CD.
You will often see SACDs from classical music labels. They're generally hybrid, which means they work like a CD on a normal player. The SACD format uses a completely different DAC technology that is actually only 1 bit, but at a very high frequency. Sony is probably the biggest manufacturer of SACD players. 8:53 The 24/96 PCM sound thing isn't anything to do with SACD, but actually on DVDs (including some DVD videos marked LPCM - not just DVD audio) and blurays.
I don't know if CD ever really went away. They were the last physical media for music and I've always seen them in stores, unlike vinyl which was pulled from stores in the 90s.
Duh!! Vinyl is BACK! Walmart now sells record players snd vinyl albums as well.
@@phillipstephens4522 Wal-Mart is still selling CD's, but their selection is awful,
I rarely if ever see people use old formats so I doubt any comeback claims. They may not go away completely for quite some time they are all but forgotten except to the niche crowd that continue to use them
@@paulbrower3297 I agree! As from a couple of years, say up to three years ago, the Compact Disc is a very narrow area of the aisle in Wal-Mart. At Best Buy from at least a year ago, CDs that were still being sold in a wide section have disappeared! Today Management is ignorant about some consumers wants, and preferences.
@@paulbrower3297 I'll say! Though there's been a few times I've found some gems. Picked up ACDC, CCR and Beach Boys for a good price.
Before I became a huge CD fan, the old vinyl era was over and I transitioned from vinyl to CD via the cassette that I never liked. But I have never stopped buying CDs since the early 90's. I don't like the jewel boxes as much as I like the digipack and do not miss the horrible scratching noise made by vinyl records. Ok the vinyl covers were nice to have a 12" x 12" sleeve but LPs are bulky and obviously I can't play them in my car!
I would recommend to either buy a BOSE CD player with amazing built-in audio or get a good set of bluetooth wireless speakers and play your Cds from your PC.
I never stopped buying CDs. I don't buy as many as I did 20 years ago, but still a few discs per month. Streaming is great for finding new music, and if I really like something, I just go ahead and buy the CD.
If they truly ARE making a comeback, record companies should put them back in jewel cases with decent booklets.
I'm sick of nearly every new album I buy coming in some bullshit cardboard fold out pack. Some are just an open sleeve and the disc can just fall out the back!
They don't fit in racks properly, the corners wear out in no time no matter how careful you are, and just pushing the disc in the cardboard sleeve can easily scratch it.
I have CDs I bought 35 years ago, when they were all in decent protective jewel cases. They still look brand new, because I look after them, and so do the original cases!
I agree, Sarge! I can't actually understand why there are music collectors who complain about the jewel boxes for a Compact Disc! A jewel box is supposed to protect a CD as well as possible; and for me it does so very well.🔉🎼🎵🎶
It's ironic. First we went from vinyl to cd, because "the sound was so much better" we were told. In reality, the cost of production was way lower and the gains were higher. The extra price was warranted by "the better sound". But then streaming came and the digital format proved to be the key for musicians to bypass the music recording industry altogether. So then the industry told us, "well, actually vinyl sounds so much better, it's ... warmer", so that now we buy vinyl again. The production cost is high but so is the retail price - it's worth the warm sound isn't it?
Hey, remember, DVD and Blu-ray players play CDs as well. Most of them have digital coaxial or optical TOSLINK outputs so you can hear pure digital from your A/V receiver and hifi speakers. Use a mini LCD monitor instead of huge TV as the heads-up display when using the remote. No need to have to scrub ebay for an old 90s CD player deck. Hope that helps.
theres a lot of new cd players in the market today, onkyo, denon, marantz, rotel, nad, technics, etc.
*your XBOX 360 unit and PS4 plays CDs wonderfully too on a good loud sound bar kids* 💡
@A Friend ps4 and ps 5s do not play cds. They will dvds but not cds. I know this because I have both. Do your homework before you post.
@@chillidog5000 *1 and 2 did stupid is what they were talking about!*
@@afriend9428 My knowledge only extends to disc players. I've never played video games as an adult. They give me migraines. Besides, I don't have the time.
Sometimes the CD booklets have historical information about the album or the band. I like that.
Me too, Paul
Me too!
Me too
Always had CD's. Still own every single disc I've received and bought since getting my first one for my 10th birthday in 1995. I still own that one too. A compilation of 12" extended mixes of 80's songs
This is great news. I’ve been a collector of funk and soul music since the 1970s. I always tell my grandkids whether it’s vinyl tape or cd ,it’s the same music. Vinyls can sound like snap crackle and pop. Tapes eventually twist and chew up. However the CDs give the purest clearest best sound by a country mile. CDs are as clear as water compared to vinyl and tapes. I’m 100% a cd man.
I've never stopped buying em in the first place I've got over 4 thousand of em ❤️
@8:58; Direct Stream Digital or SACD is a 1-bit system with samples at 2822.4Hz (64x44.1Hz).