Continuing with CDs?

I think "purely analogue" LPs these days are quite rare

Tony Allen - The Source (2017) was a fully analogue (AAA) vinyl release. There can't be many others.

Vinyl has a very pleasant signature sound, midrangey, sight supression highs, they were using the DiscComputer in the process in the early 80s, having some digital in the process doesn't negate the fact that a record that's well mastered for vinyl can sound amazing

I still think a great record on a great setup is the greatest, though many people never actually hear that anymore

they buy it and put it on the shelf in one of those dumb plastic frames on the wall

fixed that for u

― sleeve

are you making fun of me for decorating my hallway with framed versions of every cover variant of "fate for breakfast"

Kim Deal is 100% analog, from recording to vinyl. She calls it All Wave.

There's a series of Blue Note vinyl reissues that are all-analog, pressed at 45rpm, and very expensive.

Good resource:

https://www.analogplanet.com/category/aaa-vinyl

xxp I actually learned from this thing that All Nerve was mixed in Pro Tools.

what a betrayal! I just threw my copy off the balcony. JK it's a fantastic album and sounds great in my car

Obviously, there are reasons for trying to maintain an all-analog chain aside from any supposed resolution/dynamic range benefits (which, as pointed out above, are likely not true anyway; 24-bit recording+mixing dithered/noise-shaped for 16-bit playback beating just about any tape/vinyl ever made on that score). I think at the Kim D end of things, it's about immediacy and performance and purposely not having the fallback of being able to endlessly edit/comp/shift/etc.

Talking of old formats, I set up a secondhand Pioneer CD Recorder for someone this weekend, popped in a CD-R to dub an LP for the car and realised... it only takes "music" CD-Rs! Remember those? RIAA et al's attempt to add copyright levies for home recording before everyone had burners in their PCs. There's a little code burned into the pre-groove wobble that you can't replicate with software, so I guess I need to find some of these blasted discs. Looks like they're about £90p each. (It will play computer-burned CD-Rs just fine, as, post-finalisation, they just look like regular CDs to the machine).

haha oh man.

the music industry's ingenuity at stopping people listening to their product is really something else

I did mean 90p, not £90 up there, in case that wasn't clear. Still, that's 6x the price of yr regular CD-Rs. Managed to find a spindle of ten Maxell CD-RWs ("for Music") for a tenner but...the reviews are split on whether these actually work on standalone recorders or not. The late '90s were *great*. Hacking MiniDiscs so they could store 85min of music... and then sheepishly taking yr deck back to the shop because was making a terrible grinding noise as a result.

Mike I think I have "music" CDrs knocking about from the days when I had a CD recorder, if you only need (literally) one or two?

Aw, thanks! I have been looking on Pam's behalf and there do seem to be some eBay deals to be had (e.g. 25x discs for £8). It may be that she'll never use this feature but it would be great to get a disc and see how well it works.

The Super Audio CD I wanted was Return To Forever - Music Magic but I'll just get an earlier version.

thread of the decade

xpost to Mike

If you have a "music" CD-RW you literally only need one.

I ended up with one of these as it was cheap in Richer Sounds the day I went in to replace a CD player and one you've recorded the stuff onto a 'proper' disc you can copy that straight off to a cheap CD-R and reuse it for recording in the player.

I ripped a number of 7"s using it and the results were fine but I found the level setting a bit clunky and not particularly accurate.

I set up a secondhand Pioneer CD Recorder for someone this weekend, popped in a CD-R to dub an LP for the car and realised... it only takes "music" CD-Rs! Remember those?

Hah, my Dad had one of those Pioneers, but I had indeed forgotten that it needed special discs.

(Should still have one of those Pioneers, except it stopped working about 15 years ago, so he took it to the local hi-fi shop who said they could fix it but they had to order a spare part in... and they just kept the thing and never got back in touch. I still bear a grudge about this even though neither of us have any use for the thing any more.)

I think 90p is a lot cheaper than they were at the time btw. I recall paying about £3 a pop. But at least then you could get them in a physical shop and not pay for postage. Don't think I have any blanks left, but I'll check the drawer where all the other stacks and spindles of CD-Rs have gone unused for a decade...

(xpost with aldo's cunning trick - damn, why didn't I think of that? nice work)

Yeah, I did think about just going vinyl>CD-RW>rip to computer>burn to cheap CD-R but, tbh, those extra steps are probably enough to discourage Pam from ever using it as a "tape recorder for the car". I think this thing has sat in a friend's garage since the early '00s; she's happy that it just works as a playback device (old CD player - actually a Sony DVD player from 2002 - had failed and cheap CD separates actually not easy to find now).

I think my CD player has finally died, time for a new one. Gotta make sure it has the inset tray for the 3-inch ones, you can't rip those on a laptop so I have to do them analog style into the CDR recorder.

I've ripped 3" CDrs on me laptop. I mean they just clip on to the spindle thing line full size jobbies.

*like

I've heard that they can come loose? I have been afraid to try, I need my laptop CD drive in good working order.

the spin rate is higher/faster for laptop ripping than it is for regular CD players aiui

every laptop and PC I've ever owned has the inset tray for 3" CDs?

mine is an "air drive", just a slot that sucks them in

Macbook

ah well, that's what you get with Apple isn't it

The real horror of all digital media becoming unusable in a post apocalyptic / EMP scenario is we'll have no way to accoustically counter wondering bands of dystopian gothic folk troups. Paper cones aren't going to cut it either.

vinyl doesn't become digital just because the master was. the medium dictates whether the information it contains is analogue or digital. continuous grooves in a platter are analogue, discrete pits and lands in a shiny disc are digital

And what comes out of a CD player or computer is ultimately analogue despite the storage medium being digital. Not that I think you were saying otherwise at all. It's a *complete* recreation of the sampled waveform within the frequency range (half the sampling frequency) according to maffs.

i think the EMP already happened and ilx rebooted or something. i feel like we had all these discussions like 15 years ago on here.

The real horror of all digital media becoming unusable in a post apocalyptic / EMP scenario is we'll have only
https://www.iowasource.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/stomp-colors-1024x658.jpg

lolll

just get an external cd / dvd drive, you can find one for like $40 now.

Dafuq?

https://coldericemedia.kartra.com/page/70M19

oh great, my secret's out

This course will teach you how to get started and what to looks for in any situation.

please signs me up

video: "some people think CD stands for compact disc; nope, it stands for cash dollars"

far as I've gotten yet. Thank you so, so much...

"I know it is 2019"...

'Already a member?' Demonstrably, yes.

It's kind of wild looking for a new CD player these days, so many weird off brands you start longing for the good old days of reliable known brands like GPX or Coby.

Were brands like GPX and Coby ever considered reliable? I see a base-line Onkyo at the Best Buy website for $169 which seems like a rip-off even with its DAC, so, i guess i see your point.

I snagged a Tivoli Model CD that came up on Kijiji, it looks nice on the desk. But damned if I can tell the difference in sound from the Panasonic portable player I was using before that... $20 on eBay. So I'd recommend those if looks/remote control function aren't factors. There's a long thread on stevehoffman about how surprisingly good these are :)

you're really looking for a DVD or Blu-ray player, they all play CDs and if they have digital out you can hook them up to a DAC

if you have a dedicated DAC already, definitely

i was gifted an Onkyo CD player, it's pretty damn good. The CD has to be extremely fucked up to skip, compared to old-school players which would skip if you coughed in the next room.

when i first posted in this thread I probably had about 1500 CDs. Down to maybe 600 now?

You should've been with me last weekend when I went into a local car audio store to upgrade my car stereo. The clerk asked me what I was looking for, and I made sure to mention it needs to have a CD player. He gave me the same "Okay, psycho..." stare I get from people when I tell them I still buy CDs.

At home, I'm still using the same desktop CD player I've had since 1999. It's a 51-disc changer (not that I ever put more than a few in at a time). The buttons on the remote have been acting wonky for the last five or so years, but it still plays great.

Don't most cars still have CD? I need to use mine more... I often end up listening to the radio on short trips, rather than: turn on Bluetooth, wait for pairing, max the volume*, pick a song*

What I'd really like is cassette! I don't have a decent digital audio interface at the moment, so it's easiest to record anything live/make a mix to tape.

Or a car without a blinding screen... imagine it!

*can automate, don't want to

It's a 51-disc changer

wow I had no idea this was a thing

why 51 though

i had one friend who had a 101 disc changer, like this one: https://www.ebay.com/p/Pioneer-PD-F908-CD-Changer/66791977?iid=163412537779&chn=ps