Still using CDs ?

spantini

spantini

COO of me, inc.
More to the point, are you using CDs for anything other than replaying your music collection? Like. . . are they any part of your home recording system?

My desktop has a player/burner and my car has a player, yet I haven't used either for 3+ years - and I don't miss them at all. Anything I want to listen to in my car gets put on a USB drive and fed thru a BT adapter into the stereo. Mostly because I've never amassed a CD music collection, my only CDs are those with old band studio mixes (which were burned from mp3 files) and some poor home studio mixdowns (early attempts).

I only bring this up because today I began setting up a SanDisk 500GB external SSD for backup storage, and I've got a CD burner app which has been sitting idle for many years - I keep thinking I'll delete it every time I fire up the PC but never have.
 
I have 40 or 50 commercial CDs and a couple amateur that get played a bit but I haven't burned anything in 15 years or more.
 
I used to love making CD's of my music. I'd have a blast thinking of a title, designing the cover, etc...It was nice to live in a fantasy "rock star" world. I knew full well that maybe 63 people would ever hear my music, but it was nice to have that goal of making a 12 song CD, deciding what cover songs I'd put on there with my originals, etc...

Unfortunately, since CDBABY stopped publishing (is that the right word?) CD's, there's no point any more. Which is a shame because now it just seems like I'm writing and recording songs with no goal or final destination in sight.
 
I ripped my collection many years ago. Anyone remember the Zune? I had a few plus an iPod and even a Sandisk I used for just audiobooks. Packed up all the CD's into bins. There around here somewhere. That 120 Gig Zune is still rocking. I kept in on my boat till this year. (sold boat) Rather not use the phone for music. It stays in a drybag. 50 miles offshore, not much for data anyway.

With video editing, I go through 2TB SSD's on the regular. A NAS might be more convenient but costly up front. I finally got one just for VST's and have it about half full. If I had to burn one, I'd have to fire up the old ProTools rig.
 
Random dude said:
Unfortunately, since CDBABY stopped publishing (is that the right word?) CD's, there's no point any more. Which is a shame because now it just seems like I'm writing and recording songs with no goal or final destination in sight.
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Don't know if it would be something of value to you. Look into Wavlake if you want a place to publish and not make penny's like with Spotify.

It is a value for value platform and an extension of podcasting 2.0. If you are creating anyway.
 
Folkcafe said:
Don't know if it would be something of value to you. Look into Wavlake if you want a place to publish and not make penny's like with Spotify.

It is a value for value platform and an extension of podcasting 2.0. If you are creating anyway.
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Wavlake? Never heard of it. I'll definitely check it out. Thanx man. :)
 
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I love CD's. I think it was a great format in terms of consumer audio. I have a decent collection. And I regret that that era is over. My 2016 Ford F150 which I'm about to trade in was the last year/model to have a CD player. I will miss it.

I own two rack mount CD burners (one Tascam and one Sony) that I've had for about 25 years. They're both in mint condition. And I do keep a stack of virgin CD's in the stuge. For mix checking purposes in my truck - I do still burn mixes to CD and check that way. But that time is coming to an end as there will be nothing to play them on any more. Which sucks. :cautious:
 
The system that gets used most here at home is a Bose WAVE CD player in the dining room.

I miss having a CD player in the car though. There's always something playing, and to transfer to SD the hundreds of CDs that have accumulated over the years would be extremely time consuming.

What I really wish we used more often is a turntable. Unfortunately the couple LPs we have don't justify setting it up.
 
I have a 100 CD player on the stereo in the bedroom. Many mornings, I fire up a CD when doing chores, grabbing a shower or just relaxing. Most of them are copies of CDs that I have downstairs (I probably have 300 or more originals).

I also burn CDs of recordings I've made of various jams, etc. For the car, I've got a 32G USB drive which holds a few thousand songs, enough to keep me entertained for any drive. It's so easy to just press a button and say "Play Abbey Road" and have the car play the album off the USB drive. But when I do mixes, etc, I like to just burn them on CDRWs and throw them into the CD player in the dash.

I still have a bunch of LPs as well, but I don't fire up the turntable much. Too much effort to get the record cleaner out, listen for 20 minutes and have to get up to flip the album. I only do that for albums I don't have CD or MP3 copies of.
 
I am not generally a downloader.
Did once transfer my entire CD collection to high quality mp3s, but if I want music, I'll play a CD.
 
Personally, I don’t see a point in CDs. If it’s digital you may as well stream. Hard drives = CDs.

If you like them that’s great. I am trying to minimize “stuff” and live more simply. It’s a struggle when you have a studio though. Cables and mic stands alone take up so much space.

Used to really be in to commercial reel to reel. I’d buy up all the titles I could find and had a nice collection, but there’s too many great records that were never produced for R2R and the quality varied more than vinyl. Sold it all. Trying to get up the nerve to get rid of all my vinyl next. I’m done romanticizing analog.
 
I still use a CD recorder. In fact, it's an integral part of my armoury. When I've done a final mix, I go straight from my DAW to it and put it onto a CDRW. Then I transfer it onto my computer and from there store it on an additional hard drive. I'll also use it to transfer to my iPod for listening to see what it sounds like on headphones, earbuds and I'll play the disc on my main computer to listen to what it sounds like on that and in mono. That CDRW I'll play on the CD recorder, the DVD player through the TV and the boom box {it's not really a boom box, but I can't think of what to call it. A standalone, self-contained CD player with its own crummy speakers that actually aren't that crummy ?} in the front room at various angles and also in the car to give me a sense of how the song sounds in different environments. If a remix isn't required and I'm happy, then when I do my next mix, I'll wipe the CDRW and go through the process again.
I have around 800 "commercial" CDs, about 550-ish of which have 2 LPs recorded onto them, stuff I recorded from vinyl or downloads. I never play any of those 800 as they're all on my iPod and that's what I use on a daily basis. I was like that with vinyl, once I recorded the album on tape, I never played the vinyl, just looked at the album cover every 5 years.
 
leddy said:
Personally, I don’t see a point in CDs. If it’s digital you may as well stream. Hard drives = CDs
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My DAW is ancient, almost the modern-day equivalent of the Wars of the Roses and Shakespeare and Mansa Musa. It backs up via SCSI onto CDRWs and for me, has been worth its weight in £5 notes since 2009. I keep up with the times only to the extent that I absolutely have to, if the old shit serves me well. For me modern technology makes a great servant....but a demandingly lousy master.
 
leddy said:
I am trying to minimize “stuff” and live more simply
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Funnily enough, going over exclusively to CDs and iPods was my version of living simply and accurately. I have two 400 space CD towers in my wardrobe and no one need be any the wiser.
leddy said:
It’s a struggle when you have a studio though. Cables and mic stands alone take up so much space
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In that regard, I'm the minimalist's minimalist. What I have is the bare knuckle. And that includes a drum kit and double bass !
leddy said:
Trying to get up the nerve to get rid of all my vinyl next. I’m done romanticizing analog.
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Just do it brother man ! The longer you leave it is the harder it will be. I never thought I'd get rid of all my vinyl, but I did back in 2004 {it funded my VSTis}. I thought I'd be cassettes forever, but I moved over to the iPod in 2015 and made a fortune selling the cassettes as blanks. There were hundreds of them. I don't miss either although I lament the passing of the LP cover as a legit piece of art that you could actually look at and admire {and be able to actually see !}
 
leddy said:
Personally, I don’t see a point in CDs. If it’s digital you may as well stream. Hard drives = CDs.

If you like them that’s great. I am trying to minimize “stuff” and live more simply. It’s a struggle when you have a studio though. Cables and mic stands alone take up so much space.

Used to really be in to commercial reel to reel. I’d buy up all the titles I could find and had a nice collection, but there’s too many great records that were never produced for R2R and the quality varied more than vinyl. Sold it all. Trying to get up the nerve to get rid of all my vinyl next. I’m done romanticizing analog.
Click to expand...
I agree. WAV and lossless FLAC/ALAC essentially are identical to CD. Likewise for lossless streaming, and 320 kbps sonically is very close to CD quality. Our household currently uses no optical CD/DVD drives. We recently donated our CD library (except for keepsakes) and listen exclusively via streaming. I actually miss LPs more than CDs for the sonic nostalgia and album art.
 
Home-burn CDs are mostly stable though can delaminate and sunlight will kill them but commercial CDs don't become corrupted like other digital storage media. I've never had a commercially-produced CD or DVD go bad if it didn't have problems from the factory and wasn't subjected to abuse that left a gouge.
 
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