Do You Prefer CDs, Vinyl or Other?

[_hi_water._]

I personally prefer CDs. The audio is very clear to listen to. Not only can you listen to it on a stereo, you can listen to it in the car. And CDs are a lot cheaper.

[bathory]

used to be a vinyl hipster but it became impractical and too expensive. all the records I paid a buck for in 2010 are "en vogue" now, because kids think any old music must be good.

 

CD just sounds better anyway, especially if it's music released after the early 80s

[grep]

I miss the warmth of vinyl, but enjoy the cleanliness of CD.

 

Digital though, that's where I'm at now. Pumping my PC through the stereo sounds just as good as when I'd do the same with a CD player. Which is good enough. With the convenience of being able to drag and drop playlists together from the library.

 

For the car - still using a 2009 era 6th generation iPod. So long as I can still find parts, I'll keep using it.

[Nova Carmina]

LPs for the cover art, CDs for the convenience. I'll go digital if the file is something lossless, but what I really can't stand are tinny little .mp3 files. The stuff I get from iTunes is strictly for passing fancies.

[Union 5-3992]

I generally buy CDs and rip the files. I still like to collect them because I like actually owning a physical object.

[Fordgalaxy]

I prefer cds but have a nice turntable that I use sometimes. I listen to more music via headphones than anything else right now. In the car it's strictly digital from a micro SD card.

[bluefox4000]

I'm nearly strictly digital at this point. takes up less room, lol. if i hear an album i REALLY love i will still buy the CD.

 

I also have a vinyl collection if i want to listen retro.

 

but yea. digital mostly now. and i have no problem with it.

 

Mick

Edited June 25, 2020 by bluefox4000

[Derek19]

When c.ds started coming out, I was buying, purchasing, and listening to them. I've liked the clearness, and having, and owning physical copies of them. When, and if I rip, and burn copies of them, I can listen to them on my home stereo system, in my car, and on my two computers I have, too. Edited June 25, 2020 by Derek19

[Fordgalaxy]

I think it's rather comical that cassettes are making a nostalgic comeback considering that is a lousy format for music playback in the long term.

[1-0-0-1-0-0-1]

When c.ds started coming out, I was buying, purchasing, and listening to them. I've liked the clearness, and having a physical copy of them. When, and if I rip, and burn a copy of them, I can listen to them on my home stereo system, in my car, and on my two computers I have, too.

 

Buying AND purchasing! I prefer to pay for things only once, but that's just me. :D

[1-0-0-1-0-0-1]

I think it's rather comical that cassettes are making a nostalgic comeback considering that is a lousy format for music playback in the long term.

 

And just think, they don't sound as bad as 8-tracks, which for a lot of people are even more nostalgic.

[Entre_Perpetuo]

I prefer vinyl. For older music it's often not hard (and quite fun) to hunt for a cheap record of the album I want at record stores and thrift shops and the like, and for newer music there's nothing more satisfying than getting a new vinyl record with the full cover art and lyric insert and everything. I'm not exclusive to one format by any means though, but if I could own all of my albums on vinyl one day that would be a happy day for me. I buy CDs when they're cheaper and more convenient (often through Amazon as they have many cheap ones) and I still buy digital when that's cheaper (I'm not picky about lossless files or anything like that, mp3s sound fine in my Dad's mini van and fine in my 15 dollar earbuds). Eventually it all goes through my home computer or my laptop (via just iTunes, Amazon Music then iTunes, or Audacity then iTunes) so I can put it on my iPod. Up until February I had a 7th gen iPod classic with 160 GB. I'd just passed the halfway mark when the headphone jack broke and then the whole device malfunctioned and lost all the music I had on it. Being stuck at home since mid-march it hasn't been a big issue that my iPod was a brick, but since I'll be going back to school before long, I now have the new 256 gig iPod touch as a replacement.

[grep]

I'm in the process of converting some old cassettes to digital. Frankly, am going out of my way to make sure I capture noise, loop echo, wrinkle distortion, lead in clicks, etc. I won't be doing much correction other than small edits between tracks and volume.

 

They sound OK, and most of my stuff has held up for 30-40 years. But they DO have that cassette sound. Which I kind of like.

 

FM static too FTW!!

Edited June 25, 2020 by grep

[invisible airwave]

Been preferring vinyl lately. Nice to see other streaming services add “master” editions of albums like Apple. Neil Young was right. Screw compressed mp3 sound.

[goose]

I'm nearly strictly digital at this point. takes up less room, lol. if i hear an album i REALLY love i will still buy the CD.

 

I also have a vinyl collection if i want to listen retro.

 

but yea. digital mostly now. and i have no problem with it.

 

Mick

I had a ton of vinyl but sold or gave it all away when I retired. Same with my cd collection. For me it's streaming or digital, for the simplicity. I use Amazon Prime for personal devices, YouTube for listening loud at home.

 

I have to say that I love YouTube for all the quirky esoteric stuff you can find. You used to have to hunt through record stores to find a rarity (Zeppelin's hey,Hey What can I Do was once a holy grail of sorts), and now just about every once-treasured collectible is accessible with a simple search. It's awesome.

[pjbear05]

I prefer CD's for home, but for the car I use my laptop to convert them to mp3, then sync them to an mp3 player. Problem is my player, a Sansa Fuze, is nearly tapped out the16 MB memory. I am considering dropping the $$$ for an IPod just to take advantage of the larger memory.

 

Have a bunch of albums on casette, mostly taped from CD. This includes a copy of the original version of ESL, which initiated my first foray into Rush. Years later gave the guy that made the tape a CD copy of the remastered version.

 

Vinyl? All 30+ years old, and a mess. This includes my 3rd copy of ELP's Welcome Back My Friends 2 LP set. Yeah, I really love that album!

Edited June 25, 2020 by pjbear05

[treeduck]

CD's.

[goose]

I prefer CD's for home, but for the car I use my laptop to convert them to mp3, then sync them to an mp3 player. Problem is my player, a Sansa Fuze, is nearly tapped out the16 MB memory. I am considering dropping the $$$ for an IPod just to take advantage of the larger memory.

 

Have a bunch of albums on casette, mostly taped from CD. This includes a copy of the original version of ESL, which initiated my first foray into Rush. Years later gave the guy that made the tape a CD copy of the remastered version.

 

Vinyl? All 30+ years old, and a mess. This includes my 3rd copy of ELP's Welcome Back My Friends 2 LP set. Yeah, I really love that album!

You can get a 64gig MP3 player for under 20 bucks.

[pjbear05]

I prefer CD's for home, but for the car I use my laptop to convert them to mp3, then sync them to an mp3 player. Problem is my player, a Sansa Fuze, is nearly tapped out the16 MB memory. I am considering dropping the $$$ for an IPod just to take advantage of the larger memory.

 

Have a bunch of albums on casette, mostly taped from CD. This includes a copy of the original version of ESL, which initiated my first foray into Rush. Years later gave the guy that made the tape a CD copy of the remastered version.

 

Vinyl? All 30+ years old, and a mess. This includes my 3rd copy of ELP's Welcome Back My Friends 2 LP set. Yeah, I really love that album!

You can get a 64gig MP3 player for under 20 bucks.

Are these 64 gigs of hard memory? Most of what I'm seeing utilize an sd card. I have that feature on my Fuze, and it sucks. No thanks.

[J2112YYZ]

CDs.

 

Although these days I listen to digital more often. It's just easier to go on spotify and have everything right there for me to choose from.

 

I still buy CDs though. Especially for bands whose discography I already have everything from on CD. Gotta keep the collections current.

[Syrinx]

I love the esthetic and look of an album but prefer cd's for their sound and convenience

[Na na na]

Digital

[Babycat]

CDs. I do have vinyl records too, and a handful of cassettes. I've never even seen an 8-track.

[toymaker]

The new turntable I just brought home was NOT was I was expecting . . . but it's cool. I've been getting back into vinyl. Although I gave a lot of albums away when CDs came out, I kept most of my collection and have bought a few things over for the nostalgic value - and sometimes because I am absent minded. I thought I had lost or given away my vinyl copy of Close to the Edge, so I found a copy in an antique market recently, and then realized that my copy has been hanging in a frame downstairs in my music room. Duh.

 

Anyway, the turntable. I had a Dual when I was younger, but after it needed a second repair I ditched it. I then got a used Technics which served me well for a while, but I thought since I had so many records I should get something nice. So I went into the stereo shop and I told the guy I wanted a good quality, basic turntable. In my mind, I meant no USB, no bluetooth or any of that stuff. So I get it home and discover that, I guess like a lot of audiophile equipment, this is completely manual. So when it gets the the end of the album side, the stylus just goes round and round and round until you go and lift it up. The platter doesn't even start spinning when you push the tonearm over. I didn't realize there was a switch on the underside. It also has this (to me) complicated balancing system and anti-skating thing - a little weight suspended from some fishing line. Anyway, the upside is that listening to a record now is a more absorbing experience, just like it was when I was a kid. I sit and listen. No multitasking! So I get to appreciate my music more. My neighbor has a record washing system that he is going to let me use to clean up my collection.

 

In the end, I find that I do like listening to vinyl albums more than CDs, so my CD collection will likely be for the car, mostly. Vinyl does take up a lot of space, though!

Edited August 17, 2021 by toymaker

[Entre_Perpetuo]

The new turntable I just brought home was NOT was I was expecting . . . but it's cool. I've been getting back into vinyl. Although I gave a lot of albums away when CDs came out, I kept most of my collection and have bought a few things over for the nostalgic value - and sometimes because I am absent minded. I thought I had lost or given away my vinyl copy of Close to the Edge, so I found a copy in an antique market recently, and then realized that my copy has been hanging in a frame downstairs in my music room. Duh.

 

Anyway, the turntable. I had a Dual when I was younger, but after it needed a second repair I ditched it. I then got a used Technics which served me well for a while, but I thought since I had so many records I should get something nice. So I went into the stereo shop and I told the guy I wanted a good quality, basic turntable. In my mind, I meant no USB, no bluetooth or any of that stuff. So I get it home and discover that, I guess like a lot of audiophile equipment, this is completely manual. So when it gets the the end of the album side, the stylus just goes round and round and round until you go and lift it up. The platter doesn't even start spinning when you push the tonearm over. I didn't realize there was a switch on the underside. It also has this (to me) complicated balancing system and anti-skating thing - a little weight suspended from some fishing line. Anyway, the upside is that listening to a record now is a more absorbing experience, just like it was when I was a kid. I sit and listen. No multitasking! So I get to appreciate my music more. My neighbor has a record washing system that he is going to let me use to clean up my collection.

 

In the end, I find that I do like listening to vinyl albums more than CDs, so my CD collection will likely be for the car, mostly. Vinyl does take up a lot of space, though!

 

Wow that is manual! What exactly is anti-skate and does it give a better result than you were used to?

 

I find that CD's actually take up more space than records. It's all in the smallest dimension. CD's may be less tall and wide than vinyl, but with jewel cases they're noticeably thicker, and they don't compress when stacked against each other at all. Also, since I need to be able to see the spine to grab the album and know which one it is, I can't stack CD's one in front of the other and still expect myself to look through the back row very often (too much hassle). So the loss of width doesn't actually add storage space, and the loss of height doesn't help much without extra shelves (don't really want to be stacking them directly on top of one another, it'd be like Jenga), which just leaves the extra thickness as the determining factor. Since records are more the scale of books, its easier to find shelving that accommodates them efficiently, and since the sleeves are always cardboard or paper they're compressible enough to get snug with one another, not to mention smooth enough to be removed from their snug positions without too much hassle (unless you've really got em jammed in there). CDs have this weird problem where all the little bump outs around the edges of the cases make it difficult to slide one out of a snug shelf of them without pulling its neighbors. Also they're noisier to deal with, like giant lego pieces clattering around.

 

But I agree with all above comments that they're more conveniently sized for transportation, and the fact that you can listen to a CD in pretty much any car is a huge plus. A lot of older cars which are still on the road don't have aux cords, and there's a brief era of cars where they don't have tape decks either so you can't get one of those adapters. CD's are a blessing in that way, plus they can be ripped and burned, and the sound quality is generally great. However I don't think it's better than a clean record.