MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
Starting to think I want rid of them
A company that buys them from you and then loads all to itunes would be nice, but cannot find such.
Anybody ditch their CD's ??
J.
why would you get rid of them, s'not they take up a lot of room.
[url= http://www.audiograbber.org/download.html ]Audiograbber[/url] is your friend, but if you want to pay me to do it, I will...
I'm of no use to you as I love cd's. Old fashioned but nothing better than getting some new ones in the post. (Always buy them online)
Sold all mine. 500-ish. Got a quid each for them at the local 2nd hand record shop. Absolutely no need for them with Spotify and all the stuff I have in digital formats.
I still use CDs as I am not into losing half the detail of every album to cr4ppy mp3/i-tunes file losses.
It seems everyone wants a billion albums on their tiny player yet doesn't give a cr4p about quality any more.
There is the physical thing about CDs that falk mentions too and the fun of discussing your/someone elses music collection if someone comes over for the first time.
IMO i-players/etc are fine for personal players or maybe in the car. For home hifi, unless you buy daft priced upscaling software, you may as well listen to the radio.
Still playing them as it stands.
Just need more rrom in the flat.
J.
Hmm,
Was not aware of the quality loss - figured it was all digital.
Changes things a bit.
J.
I don't have many (c.800), so they don't take up an awful lot of room. Ripping them lossless nd storing digitally would be a PITA, and liable to hardware and software failures without backups.
Instead, I suffer low quality rips for the convenience of ipod use, know I have the real thing as a back up and listen to them on my stereo when I have a chance.
I took mine to the local record shop. Went in with the intention of making money, but came out owing them money. Doh ! At least I got some new stuff.
EDIT : loads of other sites out there doing similar stuff btw
Considering the hours I spent happily listening to cassettes, MP3s are just fine.
Personally I'm trying to design a product that will use beautifully circular pieces of polycarbonate, in a structural fashion. Nowhere near.
Surf-Mat - Member
I still use CDs as I am not into losing half the detail of every album to cr4ppy mp3/i-tunes file losses.It seems everyone wants a billion albums on their tiny player yet doesn't give a cr4p about quality any more.
There is the physical thing about CDs that falk mentions too and the fun of discussing your/someone elses music collection if someone comes over for the first time.
IMO i-players/etc are fine for personal players or maybe in the car. For home hifi, unless you buy daft priced upscaling software, you may as well listen to the radio.
What he said ^
The MP3 compression algorithms lose a lot data whilst compressing the CD sound.
[i]Instead, I suffer low quality rips for the convenience of ipod use, know I have the real thing as a back up and listen to them on my stereo when I have a chance. [/i]
Amen.
Surf-Mat [b]BIG[/b] +1...
Encoded them all years ago.
[url= http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ ]Exact Audio Copy[/url] is great for this, as it can separate out the ripping and encoding - so it can take in a CD, extract the data and put it in a queue for encode. So it can read and spit out a CD in a minute or two (if you've got a decent CD drive), I just did it over a few weeks, took a big stack to the PC when I was doing some browsing and just fed it disc after disc. The encoding takes longer but it would just catch up in between times.
Didn't bother with lossless, just very high quality VBR MP3 which is fine to my ears. As a test, encode with your preferred settings, convert back to WAV and burn that as an audio CD. Get someone to do a double-blind test with you and see if you can tell the difference. Most people can't actually tell them apart once bitrates exceed 128k. Crappy players can have an effect - so just don't use them for home hifi use.
The CDs themselves just live in boxes in my parents' attic. Been thinking of getting rid but I can't be bothered to sort them out only to get a pittance for each one. New music I tend to buy from Amazon's MP3 store where they're encoded in the same way as I use for my own rips.
the sound quality of my cds and cd player are ten times better than on the PC.
[i]Was not aware of the quality loss - figured it was all digital.
Changes things a bit.[/i]
You won't notice it. People pretend they do, but then some people think they can tell the difference between bottled and tap water.
🙂
The MP3 compression algorithms lose a lot data whilst compressing the CD sound.
I bet none of you could tell the difference between a 320kbps MP3 and a CD in a blind test. Probably not even a 224kbps VBR MP3.
the sound quality of my cds and cd player are ten times better than on the PC.
10 times eh? Well that sounds pretty scientific.
you could use this if you're worried about loss of quality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lossless
You won't notice it. People pretend they do,
Old argument. Lines well drawn.
FWIW, a friend who listens to music on her computer, MP3 player and portable "music centre" and who has no pretensions in the HiFi direction whatsoever, complains that she doesn't like the way that tunes on the MP3 player seem to "stop suddenly" at the end...
I'd be interested to hear what a "ripped" CD sounds like on my home system, but music on an MP3 player just sounds dead and lifeless to my ears. No telling how much the hardware is contributing to this, of course.
imho the higher the volume and the better quality your hifi, the more the low quality starts to stand out with mp3 files and the like.
i pods are great on earphones on a noisy train, but not so hot on a quality home set up..
Few comments there.
Is there a company that will buy your CD's and rip them for you at high quality, so you get a hard drive in return.
Must be surely.
J.
You won't notice it. People pretend they do, but then some people think they can tell the difference between bottled and tap water.
Yes they do. It depends on the type of music you listen to. Put on some average rock tune or some RnB cr4p and you might not notice; play something with a bit of "feeling" to it like an epic classical symphony or something bassy like dubstep and the loss of quality utterly ruins the sound.
Good music reproduced badly makes me angry - yet somehow it's "fine" because you have 324533455234 albums stored on a player the size of a mobile phone. It isn't and IMO it's killing music quality.
I've played music from my laptop (ripped from CDs and on-line radio), from i-players and from dedicated mp3 players through my stereo and they sound UTTERLY dreadful.
People that don't notice the difference are partially deaf and usually using some pants Dixons special hifi system that would make Vivaldi sound like a primary school band.
imho the higher the volume and the better quality your hifi, the more the low quality starts to stand out with mp3 files and the like.
This is true, but 320kbps MP3s are an accepted standard for music played by DJs in clubs, on very loud and (sometimes) very good soundsystems.
This is true, but 320kbps MP3s are an accepted standard for music played by DJs in clubs, on very loud and (sometimes) very good soundsystems.
Try and get hold of 320kbps music yourself though - very expensive, very hard to source.
People that don't notice the difference are partially deaf and usually using some pants Dixons special hifi system that would make Vivaldi sound like a primary school band.
Funny that because I make my living from music, including recording and mixing bands, sound engineering gigs etc - and you are talking nonsense. You are either kidding yourself or you have low bit-rate MP3s.
Try and get hold of 320kbps music yourself though - very expensive, very hard to source.
If you've got the CDs you can rip them at 320 yourself 😉
But there are plenty of places you can get 320 MP3s from if you know where to look. To the OP, it's actually much easier just to use torrent sites to get rips of the albums you already have on CD. Not strictly legal but morally ok imo.
Ripped about 600 to lossless format over the last few weeks. I just sat with laptop on knee of an evening working through them. Of the 600 there were only about 20 which I will never, ever want to listen to again. Once finished, I backed the whole lot up to external storage too.
Plan now is to get a big Ipod for me and an Ipod Touch for her. I'll put a large subset of the music on mine and she'll have a smaller subset on hers. Sadly neither car stereo takes an Ipod easily (and I've been underwhelmed by FM transmitters) so we'll have to change the car stereos. Then we'll replace the hi-fi CD player with a decent Ipod dock. Then all the CDs can go up in the attic.
Or maybe we'll just keep using CDs for a while?
What is everyone doing with music CD's
Some of us are still listening to vinyl. 😯
Seriously, why would anyone want to dispense with them? Apart from the obvious better sound quality, do memories not play a part? Or knowing who is playing a particular instrument? Or who actually wrote the words?
(Apologies for again sounding off like an old fogey).
Funny that because I make my living from music, including recording and mixing bands, sound engineering gigs etc - and you are talking nonsense. You are either kidding yourself or you have low bit-rate MP3s.
Well thanks for the lame attempt at a smackdown there but I guess you use 320kbps not the usual 196? CDs are (usually) 256kbps so the quality if far better. I can imagine that 99.9% or more of MP3/i-tunes downloaders plump for 196.
So well done - you really showed me then didn't you? Oh and the majority of CDs are recorded at 256mbps...
Higgo - sounds good.
Just maybe a lot of effort.
J.
Vinyl will always be king (and I'm not even old)
but I would never sell my CD's I have spent years looking for some of them but every one is a happy memory.
If music meant nothing to me then maybe I could see the logic of getting rid. I have been tempted to sell some of my rarer CD's but then once the money had been spent I think I would regret it.
Jerome, in actual answer to your actual question, it's illegal to store digital copies if you no longer own the original media, so companies that buy your CDs and then give you the digital copies of them wouldn't last very long!
Having said that, I started to sell off my CDs at the weekend - am averaging about a quid a CD. In my head, it's great to get the money [s]because I've got them on my hard disk[/s] because I don't want them any more, but in my heart it's a bit gut wrenching seeing my music collection go for a pittance.
Considering the hours I spent happily listening to cassettes, MP3s are just fine.
Exactly.
Or knowing who is playing a particular instrument? Or who actually wrote the words?
You can look all that up on the internet though 🙂
But seriously - I can see the aesthetic appeal of vinyl - I've got loads of it upstairs and the feel/smell/artwork etc are definitely part of the appeal.
But little plastic jewel cases and CDs? Not for me.
CDs are (usually) 256kbps so the quality if far better.Oh and the majority of CDs are recorded at 256mbps...
Eh?
The bunk - fair comment - so I will shelf that business model.
Back to Higgos plan.
J.
CDs are (usually) 256kbps so the quality is far better.
Oh and the majority of CDs are recorded at 256mbps...
Yes - they are recorded at 256 so the quality is better than the usual mp3's bit rate of 196. Not really that difficult to understand.
Studio quality MP3s are recorded at 320kbps - but aren't what 99.9999% of people use. They want 12412341414 albums but don't care what they sound like.
Yes - they are recorded at 256 so the quality is better than the usual mp3's bit rate of 196. Not really that difficult to understand.
It would be easy to understand if it bore any relation to reality.
CD bit rate is 1411 with a sample rate of 44.1kHz, 16 bit depth.
Studio quality MP3s are recorded at 320kbps - but aren't what 99.9999% of people use. They want 12412341414 albums but don't care what they sound like.
That's a different issue. You were making silly sweeping statements about all MP3s sounding rubbish when what you mean is that low bitrate MP3s sound rubbish.
Audio CDs are 1.4Mbps not 256kbs
Sold them at a car boot sale. Age of my ears has reduced the necessity to preserve the entire audio spectrum, so MP3 is fine 🙁
To be honest, it all sounds like a chimpanzee playing a kazoo unless you've got directional speaker cables.
Oh, and I gave away all my CDs on freecycle.
Naught naughty BigDummy... 😉
Actually a couple of years ago I did rip most of my CD collection to MP3, 320kbps. In my own not very scientific tests, the CDs sound just a bit better than the MP3s. Like I said though it's not very scientific.
I was thinking though, with the massive capacity hard drives available today, is there anything wrong with ripping them as straight AIF files? Will I lose any quality? 320kbps files are fine for my MP3 player. I was just wondering if ripping the whole lot again would be worth it, or if I'd still suffer a loss in sound quality no matter what.
Got rid of all th CD's years ago. Encoded them all as FLAC files, got a personal player that plays FLACs and a serious dac, amp and speakers.
It is half kit and half ears but anyone who thinks iTunes is satisfactory should be very pleased as you will save yourself a fortune on hi fi kit.
That's a different issue. You were making silly sweeping statements about all MP3s sounding rubbish when what you mean is that low bitrate MP3s sound rubbish.
Well apologies for the massive error but I think you'll find that, seeing as almost all mp3s are recorded at the lower bitrate, I allowed myself the luxury of a sweeping statement. I have also made it clear several times that high bitrate mp3s are available but rarely used by your average music listener.
It's all about boasting you have 51511544 albums rather than appreciating the music you actually have - be that on CD or vinyl. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the mp3s you have are 196kbps anyway.
I wince when I see fairly decent kit with all the music coming from a cack quality mp3/i-player or even laptop. All too common.
I buy CD's online (cheaper than itunes) and rip to PC at 128K AAC which apparently gives effectively the same quality as 256K MP3 because of the better algorithm.
Can anyone in the know confirm this or shoot it down?
IMO most people would be pushed to tell the difference between a CD and a 256K encoded MP3
Well apologies for the massive error but I think you'll find that, seeing as almost all mp3s are recorded at the lower bitrate, I allowed myself the luxury of a sweeping statement. I have also made it clear several times that high bitrate mp3s are available but rarely used by your average music listener.
That's like saying that because the vast majority of people buy crappy Asda full suspension bikes, therefore mountain bikes are crap. 😉
I buy CD's online (cheaper than itunes) and rip to PC at 128K AAC which apparently gives effectively the same quality as 256K MP3 because of the better algorithm.
I've never used AAC compression but that sounds like bollox to me. Imo the best compromise between quality and file size is something like 224 VBR.
OH AND THERE'S NO APOSTROPHE IN CDs!!!!!!!!!! ARGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! 😡
Give it 5 years and I'm sure we'll have so much storage that we'll rip WAVs.
In the meantime plenty of 320kbs, DRM free, to buy here, or FLAC if you really need it
www.boomkat.com
www.bleep.com
I archive mine to FLAC using EAC. Then I move the FLACs onto a DVD for archiving and encode them into AAC using Nero AAC codec & Foobar.
Rather time consuming, but it means that I have a lossless digital copy in FLAC should I ever wish to encode to a different format in the future, and I have a copy in AAC (which is transparent from the original to my ears but uses only 100MB per album) so I can fit a shed loads of albums on my iPod.
To those giving it the biggun' about mp3/aac quality loss: have you actually done a proper ABX test using Foobar? You may find yourself eating humble pie.
Well i like to sit in my comfy chair with a good pair of headphones on when the wife and kids have gone to bed and have a shifty through my old CD collection. I enjoy the tactile interaction of this, and often frustration and annoyance that a CD has been misplaced.
I don't like spinning my thumb round a widget scanning through a thousand albums - it kind of removes the magic for me. Good for in the car, but not what it's not the whole of the human/music interaction, for me anyway. 8)
I like a good tune. I don't really care that it comes out of a couple of small Bose computer speakers and plays through itunes, really i couldn't give a stuff, other than that, I've normally got headphones in on a bike or walking, so again, all this is pretty academic.
Spend less time worrying about this shit guys, it's really really really not that important...
Yes and you can tackle the best rides in the World in an £80 Halfords special too but would you want to?
Listen to good music on a decent system and get that proper "hairs on the back of your neck raising" feeling.
Listen to it on a cr4p system and the emotional connection is zero.
Mine are all ripped but I don't see the point of getting rid of them and having my collection a hostage to a failed hard drive or Spotify-type service that may or may not be around next year. I can't really see that the space taken up by a few hundred CDs is seriously a problem for anyone?
On top of that I'm kind of like cinammon-girl and shoefiti- there's more to it than just having access to the files.
Oh, and just to weigh in on the quality debate I think I can tell a difference although I appreciate there are a lot of variables and I might be deluding myself. 🙂
I went through all the emotions this year. I have had to sell most of my vinyl and CDs. It's funny to hear some of you using the same arguments about why you should keep CDs as "we" did when the change from Vinyl to CD occurred. In the end though I need the even pitiful amount that you can get for Vinyl and CD, I have access to the music so why worry. I probably play 10% of the hundreds of albums I have anyway. Some I have never played. I haven't sat reading a Vinyl sleeve for probably 20 years if not longer and have never really done it with CD as the text is too small.
In the end they do just take up room. I never thought I'd feel like this. It's amazing what dept and (relative) poverty can do to open ones eyes.
Listen to it on a cr4p system and the emotional connection is zero.
Utter & complete bollocks!
Did all those swinging hipsters in the 60s have no connection to the latest fab sounds, coming through on their new, crazy transistor radios?!
Listen to [i]crap [/i]music on a decent system and get that proper "wow this is [i]really [/i]crap" feeling!"
edited that for ya 😮
Was not aware of the quality loss - figured it was all digital.
Changes things a bit.
Meh - if you didn't already know about the difference, it means you're not an audio buff, in which case you're probably like the rest of us that won't notice the difference.
There are companies that will burn your CDs for you but they won't buy your CDs off you for the reason stated above (and because used CDs are worth little anyway).
[i]seeing as almost all mp3s are recorded at the lower bitrate, I allowed myself the luxury of a sweeping statement. I have also made it clear several times that high bitrate mp3s are available but rarely used by your average music listener.[/i]
Blimey that is sweeping! So all the high bitrate stuff purchased from Bleep.com, juno.com etc doesn't count and all the stuff ripped at high bitrate by the "user" doesn't count?! Where the hell do you get "almost all" from?
I get my pleasure from the musical content, not some anal study of the specifics of sound quality. Maybe if I had a "listening room", which I presume the self-confessed audio-philes have.
I just have my front room, MP3s or minidiscs on headphones in the office and my car stereo (usually a minidisc played through the aux port).
If I was hung-up about sound quality surely I wouldn't enjoy listening to music in those environments??
Meh - if you didn't already know about the difference, it means you're not an audio buff, in which case you're probably like the rest of us that won't notice the difference.
Interestingly, the "non audio-buff" friend I mentioned before, says that although she CAN hear the difference a reference-level HiFi system (mine) makes, she doesn't understand why that's neccessary...
Having said that, she does seem to be wired for visual (home cinema), rather than audio, input.
Why what is necessary?
I'm sure I could hear the difference, I just don't think I need it.
DezB - Member
Why what is necessary?
Er, to have a reference-level HiFi reproduction of music rather than, say, an MP3 player.
Sorry I didn't make that clear but I thought it was implicit in the statement.
I'm sure I could hear the difference, I just don't think I need it.
Yes, that's what I meant. I, on the other hand, wouldn't be without it.
reference-level
😆
I worked for an electronics company once, that was a little bit dodgy, they used to build/install bespoke sound systems amongst other things. They would wire up speakers using thin electrical flex, but claim to have used low oxygen high gold content cables etc. Not one person could ever tell the difference, but most would comment that they could really notice the quality and paying the extra was well worth it.
iirc then its only 1 person in 10,000 that has hearing that extends slightly beyong the normal fequency range for an adult, children can hear higher frequencies than adults, but this diminishes at around the age of 18 (hence why mosquito devices work)if you . And women tend to have better hearing than men, yet are far less likely to be obsessed with hifi equipment.
I still want an answer to this!
[i]I just have my front room, MP3s or minidiscs on headphones in the office and my car stereo (usually a minidisc played through the aux port).
If I was hung-up about sound quality surely I wouldn't enjoy listening to music in those environments??[/i]
Can those with "reference level hi-fis" only really enjoy music played on their expensive system, in the correct environment, played on vinyl or CD?
OH AND THERE'S NO APOSTROPHE IN CDs!!!!!!!!!! ARGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
It's acceptable in acronyms if it improves readability, actually. </grammarnazi>
To everyone ripping their CDs; you're backing them all up too, right? Losing your entire music collection when the hard disk goes pop is ... not good.
cds are crap.
mp3s are pony too but necessary.
vinyl is for winners.
our cds/records take pride of place and allow any visitor to my house a good laugh at my thoroughly bad taste.
i resent paying lots of money for an mp3. you dont get artwork, lyrics, random musings, limited editions, etc etc. if you like it buy the cd/record rip it if necessary, put it somewhere you can look at it and be happy.
Can those with "reference level hi-fis" only really enjoy music played on their expensive system,
No, I often enjoy listening to:
When they're on:
http://radio.myhouse-yourhouse.net/
or:
http://www.housefm.net/update.htm
through my PC speakers as it's PC-internet based.
I do have some of their stuff burned onto CD for me by one of the DJ's that I listen to on my HiFi. It sounds much better.
is funny, why?grum - Memberreference-level
A-ha! 🙂
Great band 🙂
All my CDs (inc the A-Ha ones) are in the attic having been ripped to the computers.
is funny, why?
Just because it's a ridiculous term for a massively overpriced hi-fi system. It's the equivalent of XXXC. 😉
What would actually be 'reference-level' audio would surely be a decent pair of studio monitors with a flat frequency response (in a room with acoustic treatment).
What, no gravity levellers or electro-resonance dampers?
I bet the OP didn't expect this!
What would actually be 'reference-level' audio would surely be
As I understand it (at the risk of reawakening a long-dormant thread on exactly the same subject and going round the carousel once again), "reference level" in HiFi terms means a system that is capable of relaying all the information contained in or on the source medium, to the listener's ear with critically minimal loss.
That it also presents it with soundstaging, clarity, musicality and presence (the best systems convey the experience of sounding as if the performer is in the room with you) is a plus, and part of what makes such a system preferable to "non HiFi" as an entertainment medium.
reference-level
is funny, why?
because it's a marketing term with no basis in science?
See above.
I only have cds and dont own an mp3 or an ipod and don't know how to download music and can't be bothered to find out either.It's easy to chuck the free Mail on Sunday cd in the van player
I use Kef reference 104/2 speakers.... 😉
re: reference level
I'm all for spending money on hifi and enjoying it but believe it to be a subjective, not objective, experience.
As far as I am aware there is no commonly agreed criteria for what is 'reference level' and what isn't. It is not a specification that an item of hifi can be judged against. It is a badge put on hifi that means the manufacturer is particularly proud of this or that bit of kit.
It is possible (as I'm sure you know) to spend a lot of money on two systems which both sound stunning but quite different. Which one is the 'reference'? Or which one is closer to the 'reference'?
Listen to it, buy it and enjoy it but let's not get back to the bad old days of hifi mags having photos of oscilloscope traces.
capable of relaying all the information contained in or on the source medium, to the listener's ear with critically minimal loss
My system is called a "Reference" system but wasn't very expensive at all... 