Why buy a CD-Player?

[E-Stat]

from selling physical product to a service being provided, like a utility. Thus fulfilling David Bowie's prediction.

And yet future think guys like Salim Ismail of the Singularity University predict based upon the way that solar power technology has followed Moore's Law that it will be cheaper to use your own solar panels that buying electricity from the grid in about 20 years. Click here and advance to about 17:00 for data source.

A service back to on-prem physical products. From a scarcity model to that of abundance.

 

[bigx5murf]

First of all, RAID 1 or mirroring provides no performance improvements. If anything, there is additional overhead as the disk controller must write the same data to two separate sets of spindles. More importantly, RAID configurations were designed for high transaction level applications - like businesses constantly entering and processing orders. Instantaneous failure means data that cannot otherwise be reconstructed or must be done manually. Music and video content, by contrast is largely static. I'm an IT guy and think it is a waste of resources for storing music. Why spin another drive 24/7 rather than having it sit offline and vastly increase its functional life? Yes, when you add content, you'll need to spend a couple minutes for an incremental backup.

I currently don't have a way to backup what I lost on the dead hard drive. so what's on my NAS is currently my only copy. I want another NAS to backup, and use simultaneously. Was thinking of RAID 1, so that if there's another failure, I still have 2 backups left. By performance improvement, I meant my current NAS is really old, so it's slow to read/write, I'm sure any modern NAS regardless of running RAID0 or 1 will be significantly faster. My current is running RAID0, and it's still slow.

 

[kaplang]

Why would you invest alot of money in buying a CD-Player nowadays when you can have vinyl or high-res files from a hard drive (which is a higher quality format)?

Aren't CD's and players becoming absolete.?

Because we can!
Obsolete, I don't care. It's still a good way to listen to music. It also gets the prices down. CDs at yard sales go for a buck and less.

 

[cpt_paranoia]

A redundant RAID mode is only really useful for data that is changing frequently.

A NAS using a redundant RAID mode is still prone to fire, theft, flood, etc.

A simpler, removable backup disk allows you to have an independent, remote backup. Use a regular backup routine. Consider using a more frequent backup for data that changes frequently. I keep such data on my PC, and backed up to my NAS when I shut my PC down, so it's stored in two places. Then I have a regular, but less frequent backup of the NAS to a USB HDD. If I lose a few CD rips, it's not so bad. If I lose all 6000, it's a disaster...

 

[awillia6]

That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the insight.

 

[E-Stat]

I currently don't have a way to backup what I lost on the dead hard drive. so what's on my NAS is currently my only copy.

Indeed what is lost is lost. As for going forward, just buy an inexpensive USB drive or two for backup purposes. By definition, Network Attached Storage is accessible by other computers on the network. Attach the USB drive to a laptop/desktop and copy the contents of the NAS drive to it.

 

[Wildcat]

Why would you invest alot of money in buying a CD-Player nowadays when you can have vinyl or high-res files from a hard drive (which is a higher quality format)?

Aren't CD's and players becoming absolete.?

CDs aren't obsolete, but in my case, I no longer play them--everything is ripped to a server. And I can play high-res and CD all using a network player. DVD or BD drives are used for ripping, and I can store the CDs away. I have an Oppo BDP-105 and I'm lucky if I use the disc drive in it for playing music maybe two times a year. (I use it now more for ripping SACDs to the server.) In my house anyway, optical playback is dead.

As for high-res--it definitely sounds better to me than CD-resolution, which is IMHO too limited. I could ramble on but, let me put it this way--if 16/44.1 were so good, then why do most studios today use 24-bit/96kHz as their standard? Arguments saying we can't hear 144dB of s/n ratio or we can't hear above 15kHz completely misses the point of high-res. (Hint: it's all about smoothness and staying accurate to the original waveform, something 16/44.1 is incapable of.)

 

[Wildcat]

Indeed what is lost is lost. As for going forward, just buy an inexpensive USB drive or two for backup purposes. By definition, Network Attached Storage is accessible by other computers on the network. Attach the USB drive to a laptop/desktop and copy the contents of the NAS drive to it.

That, or NAS boxes usually have USB ports to add more drives--simple to mount and back up files to. I currently have one extra drive attached to mine via USB3, and have an older, separate NAS I use for backups. When I upgrade to a 4-bay QNAP, I will keep my older 2-bay specifically for backups, done via rsync so the backup drive is always kept in sync with the primary.

 

[HTHMAN]

You can debate the sonics all you want, but the physical media will be there should your computer and backups fail or a huge EMP wipes out all your electronic data. Rip everything for convenience, but save those original CDs DVDs and records. The cloud can hold your files for ransom at any time.

 

[cpt_paranoia]

or a huge EMP wipes out all your electronic data

If that happens, I think I'll have more things to worry about than my ripped CD collection. Little things like grid power, food, water, civilisation, etc.

My physical CDs might also be a puddle of charred polycarbonate...

 

[GChief]

If that happens, I think I'll have more things to worry about than my ripped CD collection. Little things like grid power, food, water, civilisation, etc.

My physical CDs might also be a puddle of charred polycarbonate...

My brain will be safe in my foil hat

 

[gslikker]

And yet future think guys like Salim Ismail of the Singularity University predict based upon the way that solar power technology has followed Moore's Law that it will be cheaper to use your own solar panels that buying electricity from the grid in about 20 years. Click here and advance to about 17:00 for data source.

A service back to on-prem physical products. From a scarcity model to that of abundance.

Although the prediction guys are wrong half of the time, they are also right half of the time, and excluding from that also things never expected will emerge!

(Myself, I predict Dutch tax agency eventually will tax the amount of hours the sun is shining.....)

It is late here I go to sleep, so I will watch the whole video later as I did only a piece of it, thank you for the link

 

[heyraz]

My son set me up with a NAS device running the freenas operating system( no affiliation).
https://www.freenas.org
Much faster than any commercially available 1 or 2 drive systems. I store and stream all of my media from this one NAS system.
My NAS has four 4Tb drives in a RAID5 configuration. In this manner I can loose one drive, replace it and reconstruct the entire data set from the surviving three. If one drive dies, the NAS will still operate (risky) until the failed drive is replaced. Other configurations are available to provide additional protection and security.

In the three years I've had this NAS I've lost 2 drives (separate events) without losing any portion of my dataset. Freenas is very configurable and supports SMART, which sends me emails once a drive begins to show symptoms of failure. I get a notification, identify and replace the failing drive and the operating system rebuilds the dataset from the 3 surviving drives.
My system is housed in a standard computer tower with a power supply big enough to accommodate 4 drives. The operating system (Freenas) runs from a small USB memory stick.
Freenas can be programmed to perform self diagnostic tests as I see fit.

I like the safety, the ability to expand and the speed.

My son did a smart thing when he built my NAS, he sourced the 4 drives from different vendors in case one batch proved faulty.
(I will not use Seagate again).

Freenas isn't as "Plug and Play" or simple as the inexpensive NAS boxes you see at Best Buy because it's so much more. It's bigger, faster, safer and more configurable. Any questions are addressed in the online user's manual and there is a user's forum.

 

[luckybaer]

I plan on spending a lot of money on one of them SACD players.

 

[Bosphrous]

And guys I'm not trying to attack the "CD-Player" I'm just trying to figure out why someone would still invest 15000usd on a CD player

i don't know where you are getting that figure, when an excellent used unit can be bought for under $200.00

 

[cpt_paranoia]

when an excellent used unit can be bought for under $200.00

Well you can buy a fairly decent used CD player for £5.

But you can also buy a new CD player for a lot more than £15k. Burmester at £35k, anyone?

 

[heyraz]

I still have a CD player hooked up to my stereo but rarely use it because it's not as convenient as streaming either from Tidal or my NAS. If I get the urge to hear a CD, I play it from my CDP and then rip it to my NAS for the next time.
I also own more CD's than I can comfortably store or conveniently access. The pile of CD's to re-file after play always seems to grow.
The way I see it ...when it comes to (digital) audio there's no difference where the "bits" come from. Storing those bits on my NAS is much easier to access, the only downside is I having to rip each of my CD's to Flac to store them.
Same for Video...access from my NAS is easier every which way.
A subscription to to an audio streaming service also makes sense "dollar wise"...it's the cost of one CD per month and you get so much more. In my case, if I like a streamed title that much, I'll buy it on vinyl. The streaming services are convenient and have the titles available before the store's open. I listened to the new Beatles "White Album" at midnight the night before it was available in stores.
The only downside to the NAS approach is reliability, which I explained above and why I don't use an inexpensive or unreliable NAS. I have spare SATA drives available in case one fails on my NAS. A drive can be replaced in minutes, the NAS is immediately available and the "resilvering" process takes but a few hours to complete. If the NAS motherboard were to die it's no big deal...the operating system is on a USB stick and can be moved to another motherboard. If the motherboard failed on one of those inexpensive NAS drives.....that's it, everything's gone. The operating system is proprietary. Freenas is open sourced.
If my CD player stopped working today I would make sure the next one had a digital output or was a simple transport...everything goes through my DAC anyway.

It makes sense to own a CD player for the occasional use but it doesn't make sense (to me) to purchase one with an outstanding audio output stage. A stand alone DAC can accept more than one digital input, it should have the outstanding audio stage.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[cpt_paranoia]

If the motherboard failed on one of those inexpensive NAS drives.....that's it, everything's gone

That's not quite true. The disk is usually undamaged, and can easily be removed and all the data recovered; the WD My Cloud forum has plenty of reports of just this sort of thing happening.

 

[GChief]

This and another thread made me play some Tool with my disk player and receiver before they go.

I never said it didn’t sound good! I just prefer LP’s and I can only have one physical media here

 

[heyraz]

That's not quite true. The disk is usually undamaged, and can easily be removed and all the data recovered; the WD My Cloud forum has plenty of reports of just this sort of thing happening.

I had a 3Tb Mycloud that failed and what was recovered was worthless (individual files without any directory structure).
I'm not sure what failed, the drive's firmware or the Mycloud hardware, but it wasn't an easy or truly effective fix. I would call it a failure.
The "Worldbook" was a better product, but both of WD's NAS products are slow.
My Freenas box is "Easy Peasy" to fix and requires no extra software or interfaces. It runs its own diagnostic's and lets me know before a total failure.