The CD revival thread
- Thread starter Tony L
- Start date
I ripped my 3000 to 4000 CDs to FLAC a few years ago and was streaming from a local hard drive. 75% of the CD's are in storage in the garage with the remaining ones handy if I choose to play them, but I very rarely did.
Then I went with Roon on a NUC and a Tidal subscription. Still had access to my FLAC but also all of the Tidal catalogue. Great for listening to new music - read a hifi review where they mention music you have not heard and almost instantly I can listen to it. Roon is also great for multi room play as well as multi user (my teenage son gets good value out of it).
Then I upgraded to a Mola Mola DAC - great sound improvement.
My problem is I spend too much time listening to new music and not enough time enjoying stuff I am familiar with. I have set up a list of my favourite albums and now limit my time spent "trying out" new and ensure I enjoy my preferred stuff.
I am now eyeing off a Jay's CDT to get back spinning my silver discs. Not sure it would sound better, but it might reinforce my preferred listening habits.
Oh, and I also have 2000+ records which get a fair share of listening time.
Then I went with Roon on a NUC and a Tidal subscription. Still had access to my FLAC but also all of the Tidal catalogue. Great for listening to new music - read a hifi review where they mention music you have not heard and almost instantly I can listen to it. Roon is also great for multi room play as well as multi user (my teenage son gets good value out of it).
Then I upgraded to a Mola Mola DAC - great sound improvement.
My problem is I spend too much time listening to new music and not enough time enjoying stuff I am familiar with. I have set up a list of my favourite albums and now limit my time spent "trying out" new and ensure I enjoy my preferred stuff.
I am now eyeing off a Jay's CDT to get back spinning my silver discs. Not sure it would sound better, but it might reinforce my preferred listening habits.
Oh, and I also have 2000+ records which get a fair share of listening time.
Always encouraging to read another confirmation that digital transports do matter. If this was a thread comparing two different computer audio solutions there would be a bunch of people claiming that as long as the 0’s and 1’s arrive at the DAC the sound will be identical. Of course the notion that a digital transport transmits zeros and ones is only conceptual. The actual signal is a bandlimited, noisy approximation of a square wave and the bandwidth and signal-to-noise ratio of this signal does effect the performance of the DAC regardless of any implementation of buffering and reclocking.
I haven’t tried a Zen Mini, but did have a Zen 3 and it sounded excellent. It was a little bit too smooth for my tastes, which made it more suited to some genres of music. After comparing it to Antipodes EX you could notice that transients on the Zen were slightly smeared leading to a less realistic presentation.
The key message is that digital transports do matter regardless of whether they are physical disk spinners or computer audio solutions. It is not possible to make a blanket statement that disk spinners are better than computers, but certain disk spinners will be better than certain computers and vice versa.
gustav_errata
pfm Member
Herein lies the rub. Internet streaming services provide the unbelievable opportunity to listen to pretty much anything whenever you want. But, whether by design or by human psychology (or, indeed, the former manipulating the latter), streaming services tend to turn one into a music consumer consuming "content". It's hard to become a true fan of something when a million other unheard songs are waiting just a click away, some of them maybe fitting your mood better, maybe capturing that sound better, maybe recalling your forgotten youth better. And with an AI that only serves to lock you into your existing tastes, the feeling of expansive novelty is largely an illusion unless supplemented with third party recommendations.
beammeup
pfm Member
Do tell me if you end up getting the Jay's CDT - evidence seems to suggest that this is about as good a transport as you can get - to the point that no, and that's no streamer at any price can compete with it regarding sound quality - let alone most other CD transports including CEC. This may be an exaggeration - but I am going to listen for myself in a couple of Week's time and find out.
I would appreciate your thoughts once you get a personal listen. I have some saving to do before I can take the plunge, although I do keep an eye out for a second hand one or a special from the local distributor.
lordibiza
pfm Member
I have heard the combination of terminator denafrips and Jay's Audio cd transport and it sounds very good, but we could also compare it with an Atoll DR200 Signature CD transport + DAC Chord Qutest and there were different opinions, the second equipment being cheaper. Some of us liked the Atoll-Chord combination better.
The Asian combination seems very expensive to me for the result it offers. It doesn't sound bad at all, it sounds very good, but expensive.
The Asian combination seems very expensive to me for the result it offers. It doesn't sound bad at all, it sounds very good, but expensive.
Martyn Miles
pfm Member
Of all those artists mentioned, I’ve only heard of Ed Sheehan.
I’m completely out of touch with present day music.
Last edited:
KevinCorr
pfm Member
Same for me for pop. I listen to new jazz and blues. I subscribe to 4 jazz magazines then to the streaming service to listen to what I read about. Then I buy the music I really like.
Funny, similar to back in the day before cd, I would to the used record store and try out music like I do now online.
paulfromcamden
Baffled
Friends mock me for keeping my CDs...
The Graun seems to be approaching peak CD Nostalgia Balls.
Running an eye across my collection is like flicking through a shoebox filled with love letters and postcards from my past: the exhilarating highs, the soul-crushing lows...
The Graun seems to be approaching peak CD Nostalgia Balls.
Running an eye across my collection is like flicking through a shoebox filled with love letters and postcards from my past: the exhilarating highs, the soul-crushing lows...
Del monaco
Del Monaco
I’ve got folders to organise my CDs into. I must get around to it. I don’t want any of my equipment or formats to be redundant as they all have their own particular attributes. My Squeezebox Touch can play a hash free BBC R3 but I’m more attracted to my FM tuner.
Mike Hughes
pfm Member
Friends mock me for keeping my CDs...
The Graun seems to be approaching peak CD Nostalgia Balls.
Running an eye across my collection is like flicking through a shoebox filled with love letters and postcards from my past: the exhilarating highs, the soul-crushing lows...
The same argument can be made for any format. Certain vinyl tells aspects of my life story. Certain CDs do the same. There are streamed/downloaded albums to which the same applies. The thing is that it’s listening to the music which triggers the memories of those things not some weird fetish around cover art or the process of getting an LP or CD out of its case to play. I will rejoice the someone writes a newspaper article recognising that nostalgia and memory are format agnostic and that people claim, for example, that they can’t live without the proved of putting on vinyl including the cover art, lyrics sheets etc. are either liars or actually just plain weird. If you’re paying that much attention to stuff like that for more than the minute it takes to get something to play then one might venture that your view on the music is probably irrelevant because you’re not actually giving it your full attention.
flatpopely
Prog Rock/Moderator
I must be weird then, I think the tactile feeling one gets from a physical medium enhances the experience. Still do lots of streaming as well though.
paulfromcamden
Baffled
Me too. As a jazz fan (great!) I love all the details about old records from the 1950s and 60s - the sleeve notes, the different ways the sleeves were constructed, the marks in the runout groove, the interesting graphic design on the rear sleeves of old French LPs etc etc. All part of the experience as you say.
I even like the smell of old sleeves ...and even better so does the cat! When a new (old) LP comes into the flat she likes me to hold it out for her and she'll spend a happy minute thoughtfully sniffing the length of the spine : )
Alex S
carbon based lifeform
I made the terrible mistake of selling 1000s of records. I have less, but I’m not making that mistake with CDs. I actually have 9 things that can play a CD.
Unfortunately I don’t have a cat. One of the dogs murdered a couple of LPs and cardboard CD covers in his youth. Strangely, it was my most valuable ones.
Unfortunately I don’t have a cat. One of the dogs murdered a couple of LPs and cardboard CD covers in his youth. Strangely, it was my most valuable ones.
kjb
Proof reading not always a strength
The thing with current jazz, however, is plenty of the best stuff is often only available on CD - or to stream - see the recent ( quite wonderful) Tyshawn Sorey releases as a case in point.
( Edit: Just realised I'm repeating myself from page 3 up thread!
) I've not tried record sleeves on our cat Margot - I tend to keep her away if I can after she early on spotted that the Gyro is pretty much the best cat toy ever and sat on ( and scratched) my day-of-release copy of Elvis Costello's Imperial Bedroom as it was spinning. The Gyro now had a heavy perspex lid that she sometimes sits on trying to paw the weights as they spin under the platter.
I have to say, while I love vinyl, I still think CD is a great format - if you get a decent player. Like many of us here CD was introduced when I was in my late 20's so, while my early listening was vinyl based, much of my collection is on CD and still sounds great, especially when well mastered for the format - ECM records being a case in point but also things like the recent Lucrecia Dalt record which I bought on CD and sounds fabulous.
I started exploring classical music more post 30 so almost all my classical music is on CD which, IMO, totally suits the format in terms of playing time and sound. 70 minutes lets me immerse myself in the music and many of the best recordings make full use of the time. Murray Perahia's Goldberg Variations stretches out very nicely over 70 minutes.
That said, only one of my 5 kids has a CD player ( or owns an CDs), despite my having played them non stop while they were growing up so it might be a generational preference.
webster
Listen & enjoy.
If you're referring to the excellent Innuos Sense App I think you probably need to look closer to home for the real problem - it really is plug & play.
paulfromcamden
Baffled
I heard someone from a label a while back say it's an increasingly common complaint from older jazz fans where the market has been 95% CD for decades - they either got rid of their deck years ago or don't want to pay £30 for a release when the CD would be a tenner.
It's a pain for musicians too in the sort of scene where the merch table provides a useful source of income. It's very very hard to sell a download at gigs.