Continuing with CDs?

this music dude who moved out upstairs last week left behind tons and tons of stuff in the giveaway pile.

Funny that hauling all that media to a second-hand music store wasn't worth it, by the original guy. Back when I was culling the collection every few years, Everyday Music in Portland was great for taking everything I brought, even as the payouts declined. Didn't really care if a cd only generated .50, I just didn't want to be handed a pile of unwanted discs. Now I take the odd duplicates and unwanted discs to work and add post-it "FREE" stickers.

― the body of a spider... (scampering alpaca), Monday, February 5, 2018 12:21 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

God, I miss Portland. I have a few record stores near me but they're crap.

My Sony CD player is fucked and I only got it in 2010. Is that normal? Is it the new normal?

Checking around for new cd players and none of them seem to have DSGX or Bass Boost. Do they not need it anymore? Do they sound like that by default now?

they never needed it.

i dunno, maybe 8 years is a good run nowadays.

I thought it always made everything sound better.

nah, "flat" sound is the way to go IMHO.

Amplifiers usually have time controls.

Tone

My Sony CD player is fucked and I only got it in 2010. Is that normal? Is it the new normal?

― Robert Adam Gilmour

Odd. The entry-level NAD deck i bought in 1998 only made it about 10 years before requiring service (which i know as a 20yr old deck i could still get serviced). But the Sony CD Walkman i still have from the mid-80s will play discs reliably. I did, however, purchase what was to be "the last VCR i'll ever have to buy" in the early 'aughts and it only lasted a few months beyond the original warranty -- and that was the last Sony product i've purchased since.

My car stereo (2-year old) has a bass boost button that i find easier to use while listening at low levels -- especially because you otherwise have to navigate through many menus to adjust the traditional tone controls.

I don't think I've had a CD player last more than 5 or 6 years before refusing to play certain CDs or developing other defects like the drawer opening and closing when it's not supposed to. Maybe I've just been unlucky?

I think it's normal for a CD player to need service after 5-10 years - moveable parts and a lens that gets dirty

You could take the cover off and clean the lens with a q-tip, might give you a few more years use

I don't know where you live but in Denmark you can get a used CD player for next to nothing

I've given up on CD hifi components and got a nice, cheap Discman on eBay

This lot approves!
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/best-cd-sound-ever-panasonic-sl-s120-and-sony-d25-portables.556664/

aw I had that panasonic years ago and it sounded lovely. think I accidentally left it in a car I sold.

I like cds because I make a lot of greatest hits mixes using the 80 minute standard. Most people can play these mixes in their vehicles.

I put more care into a playlist (volume normalization and track order) when it is going to become a mix cd.

So yeah, cds are way more giftable than music files.

I used to go all the way with that, mixing and sequencing, creating a single audio file, then burning it as separate seamless tracks. a huge pain in the ass but a rewarding one.

Amplifiers usually have time controls.
― Hey Bob (Scik Mouthy), Saturday, April 7, 2018 5:35 AM
Tone
― Hey Bob (Scik Mouthy), Saturday, April 7, 2018 5:35 AM

My car stereo (2-year old) has a bass boost button that i find easier to use while listening at low levels -- especially because you otherwise have to navigate through many menus to adjust the traditional tone controls.
― bodacious ignoramus, Saturday, April 7, 2018 10:25 AM

I don't like fiddling with tone controls, because I don't know what I'm doing.

To address the original thread topic: I still buy CDs. I avoid buying albums in digital download format unless there’s no CD available.

I’ve ripped many of my CDs to Google Music, so I can listen from my desk at work (though it seems I’m always wanting to hear an album I haven’t yet ripped); but if I’m really *listening* to music, it’s most likely a CD in my car.

My previous car had terrific sound, for whatever reason (it was a 2008 Mazda3); my newer Toyota’s stereo doesn’t sound as great (I’m told Toyota cheaps out on this front), but good enough.

I have two Panasonic ‘discman’s which I bought in 1996 and they’re both still going strong despite having been brutally carried around like iPods avant la lettre

My much-used Discman finally carked it when a puppy saw the earphones dangling off a table-edge, grabbed them and worried the whole thing into bits.

I still prefer CDs and feel defensive about it. I work with a bunch of vinyl "connoisseurs" who will readily heap shit on CDs for sounding sterile/harsh. But it's just dumb tribalism - there are well-mastered CDs that sound amazing, and badly-pressed vinyl that sounds like dogshit.

CDs also mean I can get some extraordinary music for $1 a throw, which has enabled me to both catch up on some areas of listening that I'd always meant to explore, and take risks on things that have led to real revelations and joy.

If my workmates spent as much money on a CD player as they did on their authentically wood-panelled turntables they might feel differently too. I always thought all CD players sounded the same, and then I got an amp and speakers that were good enough for me to hear the deficiencies in the CDP that I was using. Now I use an old Denon universal player (ie it was a DVD player with audiophile pretensions) that cost under $100 second-hand and sounds rich, warm, detailed and generally fantastic. I'm sure the ridiculously expensive ones from Accuphase or whoever sound incredible, but I'll never know.

I recently bought a new car and it didn't come pre-installed with a CD player (which I was expecting); what I wasn't expecting was to easily find many aftermarket CD players still available to purchase.

AAAARRRGGGHHHHH!

I often worry about discs scratching or having a skipping problem but I think it's actually happened only a couple of times before with the same second hand CD, and eventually the later times I played it, it never skipped again. One dodgy disc in roughly 15 years is not bad.
Some CD players had problems reading some old discs but the two CD players I bought could read anything.

I started playing the first disc of the new(ish) Lush box set Chorus. It skips like a bastard and a few reviewers have noted this, good thing I didn't buy an expensive replacement. Why did such an important package have to have this problem?
One reviewer said that with a CD over 76 minutes, there's a risk of skipping but I've never had this problem.

My new Sony CD is great but it smells really bad of strong plastic. Hope the smell fades over time.

I'll say that the way most labels are packaging their CDs now--in flimsy cardboard digipacks that ten years ago would have been used strictly for promotional copies--is definitely not encouraging me to opt for CD versions. Looking at you, new Sleep album, Drag City, Neil Young...

...New Pornographers

having never actually owned a cd player apart from my computer and playstation I'll cop to a certain level of ignorance here but records are packaged in cardboard and that seems to work ok?

Paul Ponzi- Are you saying the cardboard damages or it just looks crap? Don't know how flimsy those particular digipaks are that you're talking about.

They:

1) look like shit even before they get bent and creased, which is inevitable
2) typically (and increasingly) lack an additional protective inner sleeve equivalent to vinyl paper sleeves, so the CDs are often scratched before you even unwrap the plastic
3) are impossible to file

the lack of inner sleeves is criminal. MFSL puts out CDs in cardboard jackets these days (not digipaks) but they come with nice soft inner sleeves.

are you guys talking about 'ecowallets'?

when those first hit the scene 15 years ago they felt substandard / promo-only, but strangely, I'm increasingly into them for modern releases as long as they have a thick enough spine to be readable once shelved

I have to make a decision soon between 6-panel digipak & ecowallet for a new release and I'm seriously torn

digipaks are totally cool! with ecowallets i feel like i'm always forcing the CD to fit inside.

Just googled ecowallets, and yes, these bug me. Many don't have a spine at all! The last few Drag City releases I bought were even worse: no panels at all, just a flimsy sleeve with a disc inside. Felt like some Relix compilation CD you'd get in a SXSW swag bag and immediately throw away

Milton, don't factor my opinions into your research or anything! I'm a relic. If I had my way everything would be in a jewel case.

Jewel cases are my pref as well, b/c they can be cleaned or replaced altogether (if needed). I imagine they’re environmentally terrible, however.

(I also dislike those thin cardboard cases w/no inner sleeve)

My main issue with the digipack is the tray: if the spokes on the hub break, you're out of luck, while the glue becomes discolored over time and sometimes loses its adhesion. (This has happened with a few of my 2004-2005 Eno remasters, which were packaged with plastic slipcases as if in anticipation of the trays eventually falling out of place. Heck, maybe they fell out of place because of the tight plastic slipcase.) The Chic box set, which contentwise is among my favorites, needs to be held in place and then opened with great sensitivity (like, on a flat surface) because the hubs simply don't hold the discs in place.

dammit you're right about the tray!

lol those eno slipcases were so f'in weird and seemingly pointless

Yeah, the teeth break on those digipack trays, goodbye packaging forever. Totally impractical. I like the uniformity of the jewel case, with visible spines and, yes, universal and easily replaceable if necessary.

The idea of making a "mini LP replica" sleeve is so fucking stupid.

lol those eno slipcases were so f'in weird and seemingly pointless

I believe the label did the same thing when they reissued Van der Graaf Generator's catalog a year or two later.

The jewelcase is like just this side of a really good design that might have let me stay in love with CDs. The universal-replacement aspect is great! Sliding them in and out of shelves is satisfying! It's everything else about them that's ugly and unpleasant - the tabs that hold the booklets in are ungenerous and unforgiving, swapping out the back panel is a little harder than it needs to be, the hinge attachment feels (and is) flimsy and doomed to break. And overall I think the plastic is just a hair too thick, or something, which makes them feel more like the massive utilitarian theft-proofing things the chain stores would additionally house them in, not like a beloved album in your hand. The material feels worn out and scuffled and not-quite-completely-transparent sooner than it ought, making even the brightest and most saturated album art look kinda dingy and blah.

One of those things where a design got standardized too soon IMO, and digipaks stepped in as the "classy" alternative but with such a host of other problems as enumerated above. Though even a period of wider experimentation might not have gotten us anywhere - the early years of VHS saw a real range of packaging solutions, almost all more satisfying and feature rich than the very basic form-fitting cardboard sleeve that became the ubiquitous standard.

I passed on a bunch of cheap used Eno remasters recently because they were in those digis.

I started buying CDs in the mid-to-late 80s and even those still play just fine. Back in the 70s some company(ies?) where selling car-audio turntables -- who would actually want to take their wax on the road? Cassettes, though, cassettes were practically designed to handle ketchup/beer spillage and even the errant leftover roach.

Using solid storage towers/shelves and organized will keep my well-used stax looking pristine indefinitely.

Kinda dig those 'slimline' jewel cases - they're roughly half the depth of a regular jewel case, yet you can fit a J-card in the top cover and still print information on the spine. Often times you see them without a back-sleeve, and the disc is fixed upside-down, so you can see the graphics when looking at it from the back. The teeth don't seem so brittle on my copies (+Minus - A Rainy Koran Verse, and one of the ErstLive series), as most clear plastic trays.

I liked the attention that Drag City put into their jewel cases, during the late 90s / early 00s - with a custom (glossy, or colored) tray piece, and high quality (various types of stock) paper booklets. Nowadays you get a cardboard slip that's dog-eared to shit when you get it in the mail.

Edition Wandelweiser uses these three-panel, folding paper (thick) pieces, with a small foam 'anchor' for the CD hole. Uniform layout / typography, discs are colored (nice appearance), but it's a flimsy package. It comes in a plastic slip, with an adhesive, fold-over lip.. pretty much throwaway

Another Timbre

Don't know why jewel cases still use teeth after so many other better types have been around.

I've never really thought about it, but it's kind of true that there's no durable, protective and aesthetically-pleasing case widely available for CDs. Jewel cases are durable (or at least easily replaceable) and protective, but not aesthetically pleasing. Digipaks are a slight step up in aesthetics still kind of ugly, and prone to breakage. Cardboard eco-sleeves are a bit more aesthetically pleasing but not terribly protective. I guess maybe having an inner sleeve in a cardboard outer sleeve would be the best of both worlds, but a bit of a pain to get the CD in and out. In my own cases, I ditched all my CD cases a long while back and put everything in binders - a triumph of convenience over aesthetics.

The basic / single (?) gatefold "wallet", with two panels (+ a spine = two creases) and a plastic tray glued on the right panel, (in)side works--no extra unfolding necessary, print the information inside the single-panel cover, beneath the disc, or on the back cover. Remember when Syro came out on CD, it has like a nine-panel gatefold packaging (wtFphex !?) - i would've cut the bulk/excess cardboard off if I had to open it every time I put it on.

I solved that problem by selling it to Amoeba.

I raved about these upthread, they are great:

https://spacesavingsleeves.com/

They are polythene gatefold CD sleeves that take up a fraction of the space on shelves. If you get a CD in a jewel case, just throw that shit away and put the disc, booklet and tray card in one of these. And yes, you can still see the spine on the shelf.

100% agree ^^^

I'm still thinking about getting those.