9 ms·

Makes sense. Vinyl and cassettes are both cool retro tech. CDs are just... meh. I have one friend who listens to music on (or at least collects) vinyl. I have

Makes sense. Vinyl and cassettes are both cool retro tech. CDs are just... meh. I have one friend who listens to music on (or at least collects) vinyl. I have another friend who listens to casettes and makes mixtapes. I don't know anyone who uses CDs.

SyneRyder 6y ago
It probably helps that most vinyl releases also include a free FLAC download. So you get your collector's deluxe edition with inlay signed by the band, plus a lossless quality (or even 24-bit better-than-CD) version without having to rip the download yourself. I'm sure there are some people playing vinyl, but I also bet a lot of these are never being played, it's just decorative.
- agotterer 6y ago
  I play vinyl! There’s something special about the the experience of taking a record out of its sleeve, the white noise while you wait for the pin to pick up, and then listening through the entire album. It’s not something I do every day. Most of my music is streamed. But I find when I stream I rarely listen to a full album. Apple killed the full album.
  - samatman 6y ago
    Did they, though? I guess we never know if we're typical or not, but I tend to add an album at a time to my collection and listen to them that way as well. If anything is killing the album, it's that it is a somewhat artificial medium, dictated by the constraints of records and later, CDs. It seems like it's surviving on its own merits, there are a couple of albums from this year I really enjoy. But it's bound to be less popular now that it's just another way to listen to your choice of music, instead of the only way.
    - asutekku 6y ago
      You can go to last.fm to check any album you like and really likely you will find out that the plays are not spread evenly.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      Well, everything in art is artificial, and most things are dictated by this or that physical constraint. That doesn't make it less important once they materialize.
    - agotterer 6y ago
      Nothing you are saying is inaccurate. People bought albums because that’s how music was historically sold and they had no alternative. My understanding is that artists also embraced that constraint and created albums to create a specific experience (vibe, song order, etc). Apple started selling individual songs and for the first time people were able to buy music without buying the whole album. So yes, Apple killed the album.
      - samatman 6y ago
        Alright, fair enough. Though I gotta say: I was around and listening to music at the time, and it was Napster which struck the death blow. Apple came along a couple years later to put the album out of its misery. The album doesn't seem dead, so much as diminished, but I know a harmless rhetorical flourish when I see one...
- rob74 6y ago
  That's done to make up for one of the major disadvantages of vinyl records: that you can't easily rip them. Ok, ripping CDs is also getting more difficult - I upgraded my desktop PC recently and then found out I need a PATA adapter card to connect my old DVD-RW drive if I want to rip CDs, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Laptops have also gotten rid of CD/DVD drives completely. Fortunately Amazon has an "AutoRip" feature for most CDs where you can download an album digitally after you have bought it from them...
  - SyneRyder 6y ago
    Yep, I know exactly what you mean - I've got a cheap portable LG USB CD/DVD drive on my desk right now, so I can convert any CDs I buy to FLAC and progressively re-rip my MP3 collection. Buying CDs is getting harder too, Amazon Australia doesn't carry many new CDs and AutoRip isn't an option in Australia. I occasionally buy vinyl, I have some vinyl Super Deluxe editions around me, and getting the free FLAC makes the purchasing decision much easier for me. I get the album in full quality to play, plus all the bonus tracks & physical merch and something to put in my display cabinet.
  - Zippogriff 6y ago
    USB CD+DVD burners are nearly disposable-cheap and very convenient to use, now. The "good" ones are under $30 and crappy ones as low as $15. They're barely larger than a CD jewel case, weigh ~nothing, and are powered entirely over USB, so no external power brick.
oxygenjoe 6y ago
Cassette to aux in adapter? Like $10. Cd to aux in? Doesn't exist, gotta replace the head unit. CDs were a step in the wrong direction
- RodgerTheGreat 6y ago
  Agreed. The period between the ubiquity of 3.5" floppies and cheap USB drives was very uncomfortable for similar reasons. CD-RWs sucked.
- Tepix 6y ago
  If you had a MP3 capable CD-disc change with say 6 CDs in your car, you had 60 CDs at your disposal. Usually that's way more than the number of tapes had in their cars. And the quality was a lot better than tapes. Plus if you're into audiobooks you could get away with 64kbit mono MP3 which doubles the capacity.
matheusmoreira 6y ago
Thank god CDs are gone. Their only use these days is to serve as sources for perfect FLAC copies. A flash drive with digital audio files is objectively superior in every way. At least vinyl and cassette have the quality of being analog.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  I much prefer CDs than records. At least you can skip the songs with a remote control, sound quality is far superior than records and the entire thing is compact and lasts forever. Relatively speaking.
  - matheusmoreira 6y ago
    Those advantages are specific to digital audio, not CDs. You get the same features if you have a FLAC collection on a flash drive. What you said is true when compared to analog mediums like vinyl. Even the dust that's sitting on top of the record can color the audio and that's before we even consider the quality of the turntable hardware. People actually perceive vinyl as the better medium because of this.
    - systemvoltage 6y ago
      You're right. That's why I said, "Relatively speaking".
  - saalweachter 6y ago
    I mostly rely on digital music in various forms, but there is one advantage to vinyl: it removes choice. It's one of those "paradox of choice" things; the more decisions you have to make, the less happy you are. When listening to a record, I just have to decide to put the record on, and then all choice is removed from me and I just sit back and enjoy the ride. I don't have to decide whether to skip a track or whether to jump from a playlist to a specific song I just thought about; the "would I rather be doing something else?" part of my brain takes a break.
temporallobe 6y ago
Personally, I consider CDs to be retro tech, after all they go back to 1977. Though not perfect, they are the ideal audio format - uncompressed, high resolution, excellent dynamic range, DRM-free, and compact enough to reduce space while being large enough for at least some artwork. I do enjoy the “experience” of vinyl records more, but after years of messing with finicky turntables, expensive cartridges, and preamps to achieve marginally better sound, I realized CDs had perfect sound in the first place with no fuss aside from the occasional scratched discs. One of the problems I have with vinyl is that with every usage you’re degrading it. For that reason I’ve stopped playing some of my most valuable and treasured vintage records for fear of making them unplayable. I typically make a high-res recording of the vinyl and listen to that instead (and yes I realize that defeats the purpose of the all-analog signal chain, but my ears can’t tell the difference).
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  > that defeats the purpose of the all-analog signal chain What is this purpose?
  - User23 6y ago
    Analog is continuous and digital is discrete and that implies a loss information. Theoretically at least, any digitalization in the signal chain involves a significant, if not perceptible, loss in signal information content. Personally I'm borderline tone-deaf so I can't tell the difference, but I'm not going to call the people who say they can tell the difference liars.
    - fsh 6y ago
      It is a misconception that digital is lossy but analog is not. In digital recording, the finite bit depth of the sampling process effectively adds a small amount of white noise to the signal (the difference between the sampled value and the true value). In analog recordings there are also plenty of noise sources, for example the grain size of a magnetic tape or the surface roughness of a vinyl. The difference is that the sampling noise level of a CD is way lower than what is physically possible for any analog medium. This is why we hear "tape hiss" and "vinyl crackle" during quiet parts of the music, but we don't hear "CD hiss". On top of that, nonlinearities anywhere within the analog signal chain introduces distortions that don't exist for a digital signal. Overall, a signal reproduced from a CD is much closer to the true signal than any analog medium could ever achieve.
aidenn0 6y ago
I'm down to buying a half dozen CDs each year. Uncompressed audio, and usually cheaper than MP3s new, and far cheaper used.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  We have some CD's to use in the car, said car does have bluetooth but the signal isn't very good.
snarfy 6y ago
I used to write cdrom driver software. I've been organizing my stuff and came across my old references for the redbook, yellowbook, and bluebook specs. They went right in the trash.

SyneRyder 6y ago

It probably helps that most vinyl releases also include a free FLAC download. So you get your collector's deluxe edition with inlay signed by the band, plus a lossless quality (or even 24-bit better-than-CD) version without having to rip the download yourself. I'm sure there are some people playing vinyl, but I also bet a lot of these are never being played, it's just decorative.

agotterer 6y ago
I play vinyl! There’s something special about the the experience of taking a record out of its sleeve, the white noise while you wait for the pin to pick up, and then listening through the entire album. It’s not something I do every day. Most of my music is streamed. But I find when I stream I rarely listen to a full album. Apple killed the full album.
- samatman 6y ago
  Did they, though? I guess we never know if we're typical or not, but I tend to add an album at a time to my collection and listen to them that way as well. If anything is killing the album, it's that it is a somewhat artificial medium, dictated by the constraints of records and later, CDs. It seems like it's surviving on its own merits, there are a couple of albums from this year I really enjoy. But it's bound to be less popular now that it's just another way to listen to your choice of music, instead of the only way.
  - asutekku 6y ago
    You can go to last.fm to check any album you like and really likely you will find out that the plays are not spread evenly.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Well, everything in art is artificial, and most things are dictated by this or that physical constraint. That doesn't make it less important once they materialize.
  - agotterer 6y ago
    Nothing you are saying is inaccurate. People bought albums because that’s how music was historically sold and they had no alternative. My understanding is that artists also embraced that constraint and created albums to create a specific experience (vibe, song order, etc). Apple started selling individual songs and for the first time people were able to buy music without buying the whole album. So yes, Apple killed the album.
    - samatman 6y ago
      Alright, fair enough. Though I gotta say: I was around and listening to music at the time, and it was Napster which struck the death blow. Apple came along a couple years later to put the album out of its misery. The album doesn't seem dead, so much as diminished, but I know a harmless rhetorical flourish when I see one...
rob74 6y ago
That's done to make up for one of the major disadvantages of vinyl records: that you can't easily rip them. Ok, ripping CDs is also getting more difficult - I upgraded my desktop PC recently and then found out I need a PATA adapter card to connect my old DVD-RW drive if I want to rip CDs, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Laptops have also gotten rid of CD/DVD drives completely. Fortunately Amazon has an "AutoRip" feature for most CDs where you can download an album digitally after you have bought it from them...
- SyneRyder 6y ago
  Yep, I know exactly what you mean - I've got a cheap portable LG USB CD/DVD drive on my desk right now, so I can convert any CDs I buy to FLAC and progressively re-rip my MP3 collection. Buying CDs is getting harder too, Amazon Australia doesn't carry many new CDs and AutoRip isn't an option in Australia. I occasionally buy vinyl, I have some vinyl Super Deluxe editions around me, and getting the free FLAC makes the purchasing decision much easier for me. I get the album in full quality to play, plus all the bonus tracks & physical merch and something to put in my display cabinet.
- Zippogriff 6y ago
  USB CD+DVD burners are nearly disposable-cheap and very convenient to use, now. The "good" ones are under $30 and crappy ones as low as $15. They're barely larger than a CD jewel case, weigh ~nothing, and are powered entirely over USB, so no external power brick.

oxygenjoe 6y ago

Cassette to aux in adapter? Like $10. Cd to aux in? Doesn't exist, gotta replace the head unit. CDs were a step in the wrong direction

RodgerTheGreat 6y ago
Agreed. The period between the ubiquity of 3.5" floppies and cheap USB drives was very uncomfortable for similar reasons. CD-RWs sucked.
Tepix 6y ago
If you had a MP3 capable CD-disc change with say 6 CDs in your car, you had 60 CDs at your disposal. Usually that's way more than the number of tapes had in their cars. And the quality was a lot better than tapes. Plus if you're into audiobooks you could get away with 64kbit mono MP3 which doubles the capacity.

matheusmoreira 6y ago

Thank god CDs are gone. Their only use these days is to serve as sources for perfect FLAC copies. A flash drive with digital audio files is objectively superior in every way. At least vinyl and cassette have the quality of being analog.

systemvoltage 6y ago
I much prefer CDs than records. At least you can skip the songs with a remote control, sound quality is far superior than records and the entire thing is compact and lasts forever. Relatively speaking.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  Those advantages are specific to digital audio, not CDs. You get the same features if you have a FLAC collection on a flash drive. What you said is true when compared to analog mediums like vinyl. Even the dust that's sitting on top of the record can color the audio and that's before we even consider the quality of the turntable hardware. People actually perceive vinyl as the better medium because of this.
  - systemvoltage 6y ago
    You're right. That's why I said, "Relatively speaking".
- saalweachter 6y ago
  I mostly rely on digital music in various forms, but there is one advantage to vinyl: it removes choice. It's one of those "paradox of choice" things; the more decisions you have to make, the less happy you are. When listening to a record, I just have to decide to put the record on, and then all choice is removed from me and I just sit back and enjoy the ride. I don't have to decide whether to skip a track or whether to jump from a playlist to a specific song I just thought about; the "would I rather be doing something else?" part of my brain takes a break.

temporallobe 6y ago

Personally, I consider CDs to be retro tech, after all they go back to 1977. Though not perfect, they are the ideal audio format - uncompressed, high resolution, excellent dynamic range, DRM-free, and compact enough to reduce space while being large enough for at least some artwork. I do enjoy the “experience” of vinyl records more, but after years of messing with finicky turntables, expensive cartridges, and preamps to achieve marginally better sound, I realized CDs had perfect sound in the first place with no fuss aside from the occasional scratched discs. One of the problems I have with vinyl is that with every usage you’re degrading it. For that reason I’ve stopped playing some of my most valuable and treasured vintage records for fear of making them unplayable. I typically make a high-res recording of the vinyl and listen to that instead (and yes I realize that defeats the purpose of the all-analog signal chain, but my ears can’t tell the difference).

matheusmoreira 6y ago
> that defeats the purpose of the all-analog signal chain What is this purpose?
- User23 6y ago
  Analog is continuous and digital is discrete and that implies a loss information. Theoretically at least, any digitalization in the signal chain involves a significant, if not perceptible, loss in signal information content. Personally I'm borderline tone-deaf so I can't tell the difference, but I'm not going to call the people who say they can tell the difference liars.
  - fsh 6y ago
    It is a misconception that digital is lossy but analog is not. In digital recording, the finite bit depth of the sampling process effectively adds a small amount of white noise to the signal (the difference between the sampled value and the true value). In analog recordings there are also plenty of noise sources, for example the grain size of a magnetic tape or the surface roughness of a vinyl. The difference is that the sampling noise level of a CD is way lower than what is physically possible for any analog medium. This is why we hear "tape hiss" and "vinyl crackle" during quiet parts of the music, but we don't hear "CD hiss". On top of that, nonlinearities anywhere within the analog signal chain introduces distortions that don't exist for a digital signal. Overall, a signal reproduced from a CD is much closer to the true signal than any analog medium could ever achieve.

aidenn0 6y ago

I'm down to buying a half dozen CDs each year. Uncompressed audio, and usually cheaper than MP3s new, and far cheaper used.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago
We have some CD's to use in the car, said car does have bluetooth but the signal isn't very good.

snarfy 6y ago

I used to write cdrom driver software. I've been organizing my stuff and came across my old references for the redbook, yellowbook, and bluebook specs. They went right in the trash.