So long silver disc – is this the end of CD? - article discussion

Don't know if my case is un-typical or not but I haven't bought a CD for a few years now as I have my 'basic library' of Classical music 'sorted' which, apart from a few movies scores, is all I buy/ have bought - oh! plus some 'audio' plays maybe.
For casual listening I use either my DAB radio (which can also take a USB stick of .mp3s) or even use my TV Sound Bar - also using a USB input.
 
"From the earliest technology demonstrations (although, contrary to the myth, nobody put jam on them) through the absolute dominance of the nineties and on to the ‘mature’ format of the present, CD has been a presence in the audio industry for decades."

Orchardoo.com

What confuses people is that when Compact Discs were introduced, there was many programmes demonstrating them, and breakfast television was no exception. One presenter was sitting down and used the items on the table to show how tough the discs were. As it was breakfast, he used honey and spread it on the disc.

 
Oh and I'm still buying CDs. They get ripped to FLAC (and MP3) but still buying them. I use Amazon Music and other sources to find what I might like then use www.besteveralbums.com to find what others like, then take a punt on a CD then rip.
 
Vinyl will continue in its niche market because it is a simple engineering problem to make a mechanical record deck . The same cannot be said of optical drives, it requires a significant manufacturing setup to make these and as soon as the big players drop out, it is extremely unlikely that there will ever be small manufacturing operations who could produce an optical drive or one at an affordable price.
I had a look for a new car stereo, I'd like one that plays FLAC, my present one only supports MP3/WAV/WMA. Try looking for a car head unit that doesn't play CDs. What about all the DVD players, blu-ray players, UHD players? If it comes to it you can still get a cassette player and who makes the mechanics for them and why? I seem to see basic optical drives for games consoles, CD players etc for around £20 upwards. A record players mechanics? How much?
I have digitised my whole CD collection and now I have a portable player that can play FLAC and DSD and supports up to 400GB Micro SD cards - my whole CD collection is in something smaller than a packet of fags - SWMBO is happy to see the back of the racks of CDs and their accumulated dust.
Similar here.
 
I'm am not convince this is a CD issue, but rather a reflection of a general decline in retail.
I will continue to buy CDs (and anything else for that matter) online. Between overly punitive councils and retailers awful stock management I think they brought this upon themselves.


Another issue that's really putting people off visiting town centres is litter wardens and their £85 'fines'.

I know several people that won't go into town anymore.

They still buy CDs though.
 
I’ve bought more CDs in the last 10 years than I ever did before that going back to their launch. They’re cheap now too, although I’ve had to pay out a small fortune to get hold of one or two I’ve been after.

Everything comes back, and I’m sure CD will too. Just noticed on Amazon there’s a “Casio Collection”, including early 80s digital watches - whoever thought digital would be retro? :)
 
I’ve bought more CDs in the last 10 years than I ever did before that going back to their launch. They’re cheap now too, although I’ve had to pay out a small fortune to get hold of one or two I’ve been after.

Everything comes back, and I’m sure CD will too. Just noticed on Amazon there’s a “Casio Collection”, including early 80s digital watches - whoever thought digital would be retro? :)
This month I've bought eight CDs and two SACDs, one of which Carole King's Tapestry is still in the post. I'd really love to see digital watches make a return, I miss being able to say 'hands like a digital clock' when a rugby player drops a pass without my grandsons giving me funny looks.:smashin:
 
They will have to prise those shiny silver platters from my cold dead hands.
.. they will just have to wait a few hours for the rigour Mortis to pass... No big deal..
 
This month I've bought eight CDs and two SACDs, one of which Carole King's Tapestry is still in the post. I'd really love to see digital watches make a return, I miss being able to say 'hands like a digital clock' when a rugby player drops a pass without my grandsons giving me funny looks.:smashin:
.. going off topic. And appreciating that it was a joke, I came accross a reason why noone likes digital clocks...
No body really wants to know the time. They need to know the time that an event occurs and they want to know is how much time I have left before hand.. and the analogue hands on a clock allow one to do that calculation intuitively. If the train leaves at 11:57 and it's now 11:19 and experience suggests that the distance takes 37 minutes .,will they make it...
 
Last edited:
Physical CDs are a simple proof of the right to play streamed and archived music. I bring them home, FLAC copy them onto hard disk and store the original away . With charity shops and new compilations of older music I have purchased 12 in the last month alone for a total outlay of 30 euro .
I would not worry that places like Tesco would give up on cd or dvd floorspace. They only served the highly popular stuff anyway They thrive on low margin high turnover
 
This month I've bought eight CDs and two SACDs, one of which Carole King's Tapestry is still in the post. I'd really love to see digital watches make a return, I miss being able to say 'hands like a digital clock' when a rugby player drops a pass without my grandsons giving me funny looks.:smashin:
Gibbsey, it's kind of unlikely that you don't have a standard CD of tapestry.. everyone on earth , and probably the local solar system has, so just am sure many of us would like to know what improvements you are experiencing with the SACD.
 
Gibbsey, it's kind of unlikely that you don't have a standard CD of tapestry.. everyone on earth , and probably the local solar system has.
Well, I for one had never even heard of Carole King's Tapestry before reading this thread. :)
 
Gibbsey, it's kind of unlikely that you don't have a standard CD of tapestry.. everyone on earth , and probably the local solar system has, so just am sure many of us would like to know what improvements you are experiencing with the SACD.
I shall.......lyric by lyric.:thumbsup:

Well, I for one had never even heard of Carole King's Tapestry before reading this thread. :)
What!:eek:

Tapestry won four Grammy awards in 1972. Album of the year. Best pop vocal performance, female. Record of the year It's too late. Song of the year You've got a friend.

I rather like this album.:)
 
I still buy CD's online, sometimes brand new, sometimes secondhand (becoming difficult to purchase from any stores as most are now gone in Lancashire). I do buy the odd Hi-Res download too from HDTracks and Qubuz too.

I think the real problem is that music is now so readily available to the masses via TV, internet Radio, touch of a button downloads, etc, etc. Many peoples expectations of what a good sound is quite poor today and you'd be amazed at how easy it happens.

I once showed my Mum who's a music lover why she was loosing out on quality. She had purchased a download lossless file from Amazon of a CD which I already owned. She says, you must hear this CD, its amazing. So we streamed it to my system via my DAC and I said I've already got that. So I fired my PC up and going through the same DAC I played the same track and she now purchases CD again. It was staggering how much was missing, but sadly its shows how we're becoming accustomed to poorer music quality without actively knowing it. It the same with Dynamic Range, But that another chapter
 
I once showed my Mum who's a music lover why she was loosing out on quality. She had purchased a download lossless file from Amazon of a CD which I already owned. She says, you must hear this CD, its amazing. So we streamed it to my system via my DAC and I said I've already got that. So I fired my PC up and going through the same DAC I played the same track and she now purchases CD again. It was staggering how much was missing, but sadly its shows how we're becoming accustomed to poorer music quality without actively knowing it.

Surely that can only down to one of two reasons:

1. Amazon selling a compressed file claiming it is lossless.

2. The Amazon file being a different master than the CD.

If it is 1 that is pretty naughty of Amazon, if it is 2 then that could happen either way around.

CD will continue to fall away because the masses don't want it, but that it is shame because it is still the best way to get quality digital recordings.

I can go onto Amazon and pick up CDs for £1 each that are impossible to get in lossless download format. The ones that are available for lossless download are generally a lot more expensive than the CD and you have no choice over which master you are getting if there are several different ones available.

I've no love for the format itself. Once a CD arrives, I will rip it to my NAS and store it away never to be played again. I'd be happy to bin them all if there weren't legal question marks about my ownership of the files.
 
@ShanePJ - just as thinner TVs got worse with regards to sound quality years ago, everyone's ears slowly become accustomed to lower quality. I do think that the vinyl revival was partly to do with the quality of digital many people were listening to - hopefully it'll happen again when people realise that most streaming services and some supposedly lossless downloads just aren't as good as CD. Same as video streaming services don't look and sound as good as Bluray. Other than FLAC/WAV downloads, I'm sticking with physical formats!
 
I'm am not convince this is a CD issue, but rather a reflection of a general decline in retail.

...

Retail has been in general decline for years since due to parking and traffic restriction making physical access to store less convenient. ...

This may sound a little conspiratorial, but government (at least in the USA) has made decades of bad decisions that has lead to the stagnation of the working and middle class as well as saddled younger people with HUGE educational debt.

What the idiots don't get is that - when you kill the Middle Class, you kill the world.

Steve/bluewizard
 
When I was doing work experience in secondary school I got a placement at Mission. I wasn’t really in to all the AV stuff back then. Shame! They had built an AV TV stand which you could plug your equipment in to and they named it “M-Time” if memory serves me correctly. I think they had a figure of £2k RRP. I don’t think it ever reached the stores. The best bit about it was that in my first week there they wanted me to support in a conference (i was about 14!) and the director of R&D ( I think he was the director) asked me to select some scenes from various movies to show off the systems capabilities. So, there I was sitting in their demo room surrounded by numerous speakers, big screen TV (probably no bigger than 50”) and the player to demo the media was a laser disc. Whatever happened to them?!
 
Really enjoyed reading your review brought back memories, esp Bateman (Bale) in American Psycho holding that album...*Name that album?

If i remember right its sussudio he's rambling about, from the album no jacket required.......

Before butchering him with an axe, not a bad film but the books better
 
Give it 20 years and all the hipsters will rediscover the shiny discs with "just" music on..

They might discover the discs but quite what hardware will exist to play them is open to question.

If i remember right its sussudio he's rambling about, from the album no jacket required.......

It's Sports by Huey Lewis and the News. The axework is undertaken to Hip to be Square.
 
I don't care how the media is stored and sold, be it CD or a USB pen drive. I don't want to be stuck paying a company like Tidal £20 a month to listen to Hi Res music, tied into a never ending subscription. With Apple if you buy media you don't physically own the media, is that going to be same with all companies in the future. I think there will always be a demand to physically own media what you sell on if you want or media you can buy on the second hand market. Most of my CD's are bought via amazon second hand.
 
I used to be a pretty heavy CD purchaser, amassing about a thousand in the early late 90s, early noughties. Then I diligently ripped them all to FLAC. Then I dismantled the display furniture and put them all in giant folders in the loft. Then I said goodbye to CDs. I am 100% streaming now - just can't be doing with physical media. New album comes out one day - one click and I can listen to it on the way to work. £120 for a year of music, all the music, or 12 CDs? No brainer for me. My children will never know what CDs are/were. They ask spotify via alexa to play whatever musical/soundtrack/artist/current pop music they want and it just comes out of the speakers - imagine trying to explain to them they first had to order a CD from Amazon or go to the shops (I know, right?) and buy one and then put it in the PC and... what are you on about dad? Alexa - Play the Les Mis soundtrack again! 'One day more...'
 
I buy CD's but as some others have commented my biggest worry is the HI-FI industry in general. There is just a general lack of people bothered anymore. Students used to go out and get a amp and speakers now days it's a face stuck to their phone with earphones on.
 

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom