CD PLayer

[spzretent]

Apologies to those that are FB friends.
My CD player died. After 7 years. Not high end. Just basic and functional.
I walked into a Best Buy here yesterday. Went directly to the Home Audio dept and asked where are your CD players.
The response was shocking yet classic. "What do you need one of those for?". I told the smary salesman I have 1500 CDs at home that need to get out of their cases once in a while. That comment went right over his head.
He then took me to the clearance aisle where they had two models. Both being closed out.
He then asked me again why I even want one. I then told him I actually play vinyl 80% of the time.
End of conversation.

[redcloud]

Avoid Best Buy. The people who work and who regularly shop there simply wont get it. They gave up on physical music long ago and now only listen to their ipods or computers. Most will probably only listen to songs and not full length albums.

If you are interested I can give you the name of a couple places here in town that have good equipment...one stocks all new, the other place stocks reconditioned used but they do all the reconditioning themselves. I'm sure they would be willing to post to MI.

By the way, I have a Cambridge Audio Azur 340C CD player. It is their entry level player (I think)...no bells and whistles but very good sound.

[Hofstadter]

Just out of curiosity, do you still buy cds? That's one thing that I don't understand... it's funny how CDs were supposed to make vinyl obsolete, but now I don't see why anyone would ever buy a CD over an LP (if he/she has the money to spend on music/has a turntable). Just curious.

To me, since I'm of the age that for most of my life buying a CD has pretty much always meant just popping it into the computer afterwards, a CD feels just as digital as downloading the files. The only thing a CD have going for it is that it's a lossless format (we could certainly argue there's loss in the process of 'encoding' to vinyl... but that loss/so many other things give vinyl all of its signature characteristics/textures/qualities/properties that we all love so much, plus CDs still degrade over time as well, and where vinyl might take on a new, unique, special sound as it degrades, CDs just sound like shit over time), so you might have a more "perfect" (but DEFINITELY NOT necessarily better) picture of the recording. In today's day and age, if you have easy access to a certain website that has FLAC rips of pretty much everything... (which I happen to - anybody here let me know if you would like more info... I don't feel too guilty since I spend a lot of money on buying records/going to shows... DON'T HATE ME), there really is no reason for me to ever buy a CD now (unless I just want to give a band a few bucks at a show and I don't have the money for the record/they don't have a record).

Essentially, what I'm trying to say is that to me, even though it is represented 3D and in the physical world, a CD is essentially a digital medium because the information is stored digitally, not analogously (correct adverb for analog?).

Obviously though the fact that you have an (enormous) CD collection is perfect justification for having a CD player - of course you would want to have access to all that high quality music. I'm just curious/have a few minutes to kill before school.

[TheWarmth]

My guess is that Alan doesn't buy too many cds these days, as vinyl is the preferred format, but when you have a massive collection of cds already, you have to have a player for them! I still haven't gotten around to getting a iPod connection for my car stereo, so I still rock cds in my car. I try to avoid purchasing them these days, though. Strangely, though, the new Four Tet album was not released on vinyl and the only cd pressing was a crazy-expensive Japanese import. I broke down and paid for the download and I REALLY hate doing that. However, I wanted the album badly.

[toomilk]

Ugh, I just wrote a big long spiel about how I still buy CDs. The main points were: 1) sometimes CDs will have bonus content vinyl doesn't have (Swans' new special edition CD has a DVD), 2) sometimes record stores will only have the CD version of something and I don't want to wait for the vinyl (and sometimes the vinyl version of something is outrageously expensive and the CD is cheap cheap cheap), 3) I play CDs in my car and not an mp3 player.

Alan - my CD player is a Denon DCD-595. It usually goes on Ebay for about $50, but there's a 'Buy it Now' for $25. The sound is fantastic and it's a single tray player, which is the closest to a vinyl experience you will get with a CD. It's funky. I love it, but most people find it a drag. I think they want 100 disc changers or something. Whatever though because it means we can pick these up for real cheap. Their loss.

[jadams501]

I guess I musically came of age during the last flush of the CD era, so I still have a certain fondness for the medium. Sure, the artwork and physical object is less satisfying than vinyl, but it was a lot more portable and convenient in the pre-mp3 era. It's easy to forget in this age of ipods (which seem almost retro now, though I hope they make the 160gb model forever) that the ability to skip directly to the beginning of a track with certainty was a novelty not all that long ago, and that the ability to construct one's own playlist and have it hand in minutes rather than painstaking hours was a revelation in the 90s. Not to mention that the paltry size was once a distinct advantage.

I do like to own my "desert island discs" on vinyl, but don't have the time or space to deal with a record of everything I want to listen to. Though most of what I acquire at this point is purely digital, there's something missing there. I remember where I was, how I felt, what it meant to buy Doves' Last Broadcast or Jeff Buckley's Live at Sin-E or Al Green's Call Me on CD at that moment in my life. Tearing off the cellophane and poring over the liner notes and being bathed in new sounds meant something and delineated a moment in time in ways that downloads can't match, and that vinyl tends to be unwieldy to do frequently.

To me, having the CD is still the marker of really owning something.

[redcloud]

I still buy CD's. Much of my contemporary music is on CD format. BUT, almost all of my vinyl purchases are used records and the vast majority of those are older records from the 60's onwards. I still buy more records though than cd's. My reasoning for this is that for the $25+ a new LP costs I would personally prefer to thumb through older albums and put that money towards old vinyl. This is my own quirk. I don't expect anybody to understand this reasoning but....I am who I am. That said, if a new album blows my head off then I will search out its vinyl issue.

There are also many new bands who don't press vinyl because it is cost prohibitive. Green Pajamas for example, while not new, are a band that don't press their new releases on record and haven't done so for many years.

Like toomilk...my cd player is a single tray. The less moving parts one has the less potential for things to go wrong. And, I agree...they sound better than the multi-platter cd players.

[MODLAB]

I gave up on CD's for over 10 years now. The environmental impact of them is terrible.
I have a box with all kinds of cd's needing a home... Maybe I should just post it for free...

Vinyl and mp3's for me.

B,

M

[Laz69]

If you have anything you want rid of, i'd be interested in maybe taking some of your hands...

[redcloud]

I gave up on CD's for over 10 years now. The environmental impact of them is terrible.

M

While they do not have the plastics involved in the packaging and the record trimmings at the plant can probably be recycled...make no mistake, a record is certainly by no means "green". Think about the emissions the vinyl plant will be creating.

I think you can do your part and make more of an impact by boycotting one of the biggest rip off and environmental disasters known to man....bottled water! How sad it was when I was boating down the rivers of Costa Rica only to see the river edge covered in plastic bottles and bags. It has nothing to do with the quality of their water either as CR has decent and drinkable water. It also pains me when I see people walking around Portland drinking out of plastic bottles. Our water source comes straight from fresh snow melt off Mt. Hood and we currently have no fluoride in our water (although there is a push to start adding it soon). Portland's water is probably amongst the cleanest for a city of its size in the USA. Yet, people are so brainwashed they still buy bottled water that is probably no fresher than what comes out of the tap and it may come out of a massive Coca Cola bottling plant in Uzbekistan that saps the ground water in the local area dry.

Rant over - back to who still buys CD's.

[MODLAB]

I gave up on CD's for over 10 years now. The environmental impact of them is terrible.

M

While they do not have the plastics involved in the packaging and the record trimmings at the plant can probably be recycled...make no mistake, a record is certainly by no means "green". Think about the emissions the vinyl plant will be creating.

I think you can do your part and make more of an impact by boycotting one of the biggest rip off and environmental disasters known to man....bottled water! How sad it was when I was boating down the rivers of Costa Rica only to see the river edge covered in plastic bottles and bags. It has nothing to do with the quality of their water either as CR has decent and drinkable water. It also pains me when I see people walking around Portland drinking out of plastic bottles. Our water source comes straight from fresh snow melt off Mt. Hood and we currently have no fluoride in our water (although there is a push to start adding it soon). Portland's water is probably amongst the cleanest for a city of its size in the USA. Yet, people are so brainwashed they still buy bottled water that is probably no fresher than what comes out of the tap and it may come out of a massive Coca Cola bottling plant in Uzbekistan that saps the ground water in the local area dry.

Rant over - back to who still buys CD's.

Still the manufacturing of CD's takes a large amount of energy, the emissions are really bad too . Also, the waste from them is enormous. Plastic is plastic...

I for one am against bottled water too. It's quite a messy business too so I am told. We get our water from the Lake of Constance which is snow melt too of course over 1000's of years.

Both are bad...

M

[olan]

Alan,

For the price of a decent new CD player you can buy a NAS drive and a Squeezebox touch. Rip CD to NAS and stream. Add a DAC if you want to be audiophile about it. I haven't owned a CD player for a while now. I still buy loads though, I just don't play them using a CD player. For £600-700 you get 2TB NAS/SBT/Beresford Bushmaster DAC, and stunning replay quality. Who needs CD players nowadays anyway?

Posted while drunk in Paris....rained more here today than in a week in Liverpool.

[redcloud]

Alan,
Who needs CD players nowadays anyway?

I do. Along with my tape player and record player.

Although I will admit my tape player gets played very rarely. Still nice to have + I actually bought a BJM tape only release earlier this year (probably the only tape I have bought in the past 25 years but I still have loads of cassettes...mostly Dead shows).

[Minky]

I rarely buy CD's anymore but the new Tame Impala is the perfect example of when I do. I like what I've heard of the album so far but not enough to spend $20 on the vinyl, so I'll opt to get the CD for $10 instead.