Is digital dead as a physical medium .

[DomT]

It was said tongue in cheek

I believe that it was a genuine offer and I accept. If you don’t do a new run of pressings I shall take you to The Hague for emotional stress caused by a broken promise because vinyl is sacred!!

 

[eddie-baby]

I believe that it was a genuine offer and I accept. If you don’t do a new run of pressings I shall take you to The Hague for emotional stress caused by a broken promise because vinyl is sacred!!

ok sorry, it's in the post !

 

[bencat]

I believe that it was a genuine offer and I accept. If you don’t do a new run of pressings I shall take you to The Hague for emotional stress caused by a broken promise because vinyl is sacred!!

But sadly vinyl is rubbish for wiping your a..e on while a digital file print out works fine .

 

[eddie-baby]

But sadly vinyl is rubbish for wiping your a..e on while a digital file print out works fine .

And a CD has a better radius of course for scraping crevices

 

[Andrei]

I believe that it was a genuine offer and I accept. If you don’t do a new run of pressings I shall take you to The Hague for emotional stress caused by a broken promise because vinyl is sacred!!

That's right. That level of commitment is rare theses days.

 

[hiesteem]

Of course the answer to the question is, no, because it's a well established form of music play back. Records, CDs, tape would all be dust if it were not for human natures love of music.
I have another question? How many of us have problems storing all our physical music? I do! And I only play cd.
I was in a local record shop recently and
was told that it's problematic for couples that have a partner that collects vinyl due to storage space.

 

[bencat]

Yep rapidly running out of space for storage on my CD,s and I already have about 2000 in boxes under the bed . Still buying but it is becoming an issue .

 

[bigfish786]

Think I’ve still got space for another 400+ CDs on the shelf, and I seem to be buying more now than ever. But I’ve burst out of my Record storage and don’t want any more in the room.

 

[eddie-baby]

Of course the answer to the question is, no, because it's a well established form of music play back. Records, CDs, tape would all be dust if it were not for human natures love of music.

Yes but you can still get hold of a rare phonograph, I'm sure if you have the resources you could anyway. The fact is, phonographs are no longer relevant, just as VHS players and cassettes to bring it more up-to-date. Technology and the way we listen to music move on and then become irrelevant.

I have to admit I still love listening to vinyl, I do think it generally sounds nicer than digital overall and especially of the era the music was recorded for analogue. But vinyl is more hassle than it's worth for modern music which is most of the time recorded digitally anyway. And take into account the faff, hassle and price of it, modern-day methods like streaming just obliterate it.

 

[aejoker]

I also have a couple of thousand cds which I ripped to hard drive a few years ago which now live in the loft in jewel case free boxes . I stream them occasionally but tend to use Qobuz even for albums I know are on my drive . Weirdly about 8 months ago I bought a 2nd hand Cyrus CD7 (half width to fit into my Kallax ) because it irked me that I couldn't play a cd if someone brought one around . Since then I've bought a couple of charity shop cds but barely played them . Any new music purchases I try to source on vinyl if possible . I also find that sometimes there's too much choice of music to stream , it's a bit like someone gave you the sweet shop & you don't know whether to go for humbugs or sherbert pips.

 

[audio_PHIL_e]

In a word Roon.
I have ripped 2000 cds on a nas + quobus.
Roon is the cement that digital storage and streaming needed. All the meta data ,links, and information .
For me it makes all other forms of music somewhat disjointed and reliant on my memory....Which is not a good thing!
Roon is like an exciting voyage of discovery every time you pick your tablet up.
I get all the other points of view and all have merits but this is where I am.

I'm sure its ok if you've got the hardware and the knowledge to make it work. My last digital education was in the mid 1980s when they taught me writing C to run under UNIX. I learned just enough to put a CD into a CD player in the early 2000s and haven't "progressed" since.

 

[Blzebub]

Quite weird to be asking this as I have just bought a stable platter Pioneer cd player off Rabski. Will playing a disc in a cd player become the ritual of placing a vinyl record on the turntable ? Streaming to me these days is just so good so do we actually need the silver disc player anymore ?

35.87 million CD albums were sold in 2022.

 

[Pure_Carbon]

Recently had "source" bake off .
5 or 6 music lovers, 4 are "audiophiles"
Preference was......
At No. 1 VINYL
No2. CD player
No 3 Rips of my CDs to my hard drive, via the Node/W4S DAC.
No 4 Streams. Mostly Qobuz , HiRez and 44.1
So the CDs are not going anywhere, still buying them.

 

[unclefz]

I dont really stream so CD's are good for me. I have less on vinyl so CD's are presently my main source.
Besides, I like to 'own' my music too.

 

[DUVET]

35.87 million CD albums were sold in 2022.

Where the source for that please ?

 

[bencat]

I have to say that figures seem to be all over the place for 2022 as the Beeb says one figure but this says another . At least this one names its source and it seems to be saying that CD sales are rising from the year before , who knew ?

https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2022/06/why-are-cds-trending-in-2022.html

 

[StingRay]

35.87 million CD albums were sold in 2022.

Your figure is in the USA? It was over 940 million in 2000.

 

[StingRay]

I have to say that figures seem to be all over the place for 2022 as the Beeb says one figure but this says another . At least this one names its source and it seems to be saying that CD sales are rising from the year before , who knew ?

https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2022/06/why-are-cds-trending-in-2022.html

US sales were well down in 2022 from 2021 but UK sales were up.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/186772/album-shipments-in-the-us-music-industry-since-1999/

Prices could be something to do with it, with some new releases on vinyl around 8x the price of cds.

 

[Lurch]

Recently had "source" bake off .
5 or 6 music lovers, 4 are "audiophiles"
Preference was......
At No. 1 VINYL
No2. CD player
No 3 Rips of my CDs to my hard drive, via the Node/W4S DAC.
No 4 Streams. Mostly Qobuz , HiRez and 44.1
So the CDs are not going anywhere, still buying them.

Neil, I suspect you ranking of 3 & 4 for Rips/Streaming is very much down to the sonic abilities of the Node.
I too would have had the same source ranking to you prior to October last year with a pimped Node & Mutec MC3-USB as my 2nd digital source.
However since changing streamer to an Innuos ZenITH 3, I've found that all sources are pretty much equal for SQ and it comes down to a presentation preference for ranking.
Infact having levelled the playing field with my 3 sources I have found myself becoming lazy and using the ZenITH for 95% of my listening as I'm not missing out on SQ by doing so. I still like vinyl & cd, but can't be bothered with either so they currently only get used during my BOs or when I occasionally have a brain-fart.

 

[StingRay]

Recently had "source" bake off .
5 or 6 music lovers, 4 are "audiophiles"
Preference was......
At No. 1 VINYL
No2. CD player
No 3 Rips of my CDs to my hard drive, via the Node/W4S DAC.
No 4 Streams. Mostly Qobuz , HiRez and 44.1
So the CDs are not going anywhere, still buying them.

What was the CDP? The Node is a pretty basic streamer, especially if unmodified.