Did you replace your original record collection with CD's

[jhjove]

I used to buy vinyl, play it a few times then record to cassette tape. That said, even the 1st play had tics+pops, would drive me crazy.
Wasn't so bad with rock albums, but jazz or classical, uhggg.

Then I started buying the half-speed masters and a few direct-to-disc pressings. Wow, amazing sound.

But when CDs came out, I was not (am not) going back. I sold all my vinyl 2 or 3 years ago but kept a handful of special recordings. I kept a sheffield labs recording of Wagner's "Siegfried's funeral music", probably the best vinyl pressing I've ever heard.

But now, even the CDs I've ripped to MP3 and now play on my media server through my amps.

 

[bobsvinyl]

I didn't see a category that fit me. I started collecting records in the mid 60's and had a good amount by the time I married in 1974. We had 5 kids and my pocket money dried up.

When we had 3 in college at the same time, I sold off most of my record collection and began to buy CD's. I also began selling records and other media at a local flea market on Sundays, doing record shows and selling on eBay. I ended up with around 15,000 records to sell after buying some collections.

My 2 car garage and basement were packed. Now I'm 69 and moving boxes and boxes of records has stopped being fun. COVID and age have made me decide to give it all up.

I have been buying cheap CD's for several years at Goodwill Buy the Pound. I switched to CD's because of weigh less and take up less space. Mastering on them has improved and I have found many CD's of rare psych and prog rock for much less than the originals on vinyl. Another factor was having to get hearing aids. Digital recordings sound better to me than analog.

My music tastes have changed over the years so many of the CD's I buy are groups I didn't have on vinyl in my original collection. Enjoying the music is the number one requirement, no matter what type of media you choose.

 

[HILP]

When I was a kid, I started with vinyl, to listen at home, but then started recording them to cassette tape, and then (I still kick myself for it!) only cassettes at it was hard to skateboard with a turntable......also in the car, or to share with friends, it was just a more portable form of music, and I was never home. I kept my vinyl, and added to it, but not at nearly the same pace as cassette.
I held out on CDs as I was pissed when LPs were replaced at the "record" store and stupidly blamed the format. It wasn't nearly as fun to flip through a bunch of CDs in security packaging, like it is with an LP and something I really enjoyed was taken away. But I gave in as it was clearly the future, and started buying CDs in the early 90s. First it was new items, then replacing what I had on cassette.

I now find myself again repurchasing my CDs on vinyl. Besides how it sounds to my ear, I love the whole "ritual" of listening to a LP. For me, it puts me in the mindset to immerse myself in the music. I'm all in on vinyl now, except for what was only released on CD, I cannot find it, or costs more than I am willing to pay.

 

[Dude111]

Records sound the best..... Anyone who likes analogue shouldnt have ever thought digital sounded as good..... It sounds like sterile ctrspola!!!

 

[MarantzDantz]

I have a weird collecting quirk. I like to own the media in the original form it was released en masse. So using Pet Sounds as an example I want that album in original mono LP. Whereas Pearl Jam Ten I want on CD ( I know it has a vinyl release but whatever). Late 80s releases I can go either way but for the most part from 90+ I prefer a CD release.

That's just me. It's eccentric I admit but it's how I like to roll.

 

[Semanon]

Bought CDs, kept vinyl. Then gave away most of my vinyl to a niece who got into LPs. Replaced the best ones over the last 15 years. I take better care of the new ones, so everyone wins.

 

[beat_truck]

I've been steadily picking up records since I was old enough to. Never got into CDs much. The relatively small number I had got stolen out of my car almost 20 years ago. Never bought more. It's records or digital files for me now.

 

[larry777]

I kept my albums but started to buy cd's. Now I pick up both and am replacing some of my worn out albums with newer ones.

 

[Ruben Acosta]

I still have at least 150 albums. I haven't played them for at least 20 years. I remember them being expensive as a cd. They were a pain. I had the disc washer and kept them clean. My Dual turntable and Shure cartridge cost 3 times as much as any disc player I bought. I have heard beautiful music from vinyls in music stores over the years but I couldn't afford the same equipment they use. My records were my masters and whatever tape format was the generally used medium. 10 years ago I switched to 320 bit mp3s. Now I'm starting to convert my cd masters to flac masters. Everything will be on hard drives and external devices for backup. My phone is carrying around 40 gb on it now. It's already getting hard to get cds now. But I rarely buy mp3s they aren't good enough for masters. There may not be any disc drives in 5 years, whatever I have will last until they all stop working.

 

[Hobie1dog]

Many Lp's I have were never released on CD, so it's the only way to listen to the artist.

 

[Ruben Acosta]

20 or more years ago I used a software called Polderbits that allowed signal from vinyl to be digitized to be recorded as .wav files on a cd. This analog conversion was real time work and you ended up with songs as one file because it would recognize silence as the time between tracks. So I then found a great .wav editor called Goldwave. You could play and edit the Polderbits file and filter out clicks, pops, raise volume, add effects. There is so much power in this program it's works for me even now. Polderbits did stop making its software 10 years ago. Goldwave is still around, the great thing about this is it's so affordable and it's good for a lifetime of updates. I think I purchased it twice, the last time to get 64 bit software to work with new Operating systems. I also learned that the Polderbits has been maintained by a company NCH and it is free as long you don't use it commercially. You also need to buy a separate preamp because my turntable was no longer plugged into stereo. I had it next to me and computer. I bought a Rolls GCI 404 to handle that interface with sound card in PC.
All your vinyl recordings are very low signals even after preamp so you might want to double volume on their files at least once after Polderbits conversion using Goldwave.

 

[merlynski]

My vinyl all went onto cassettes and back on the shelf so it did not get damaged. I did not get a CD player until I bought a five disc changer. It was really finicky and did not work well. Eventually I was able to rip cds into wav files and save them on my computer. That caused me to increase my cd buying because I could rip my whole collection and make playlists from the ripped files. I had a couple of cars with cd players but that was too much hassle. When the cd play in my current car died I bought an iPod (only Apple product I ever owned) and shuffle feed my whole collection into the 3.5mm jack on the sound system. It has enough music on it that I can drive for days and not hear repeats too often. My computers all access the music server on my network so I can play anything anywhere.

 

[Ruben Acosta]

I need to create central server library also.

 

[minkybut]

I first, replaced my 8 track collection with lps, then I gave my lo collection away. Most were in pretty bad shape so I replaced with CDs, now I'm wondering do I need to replace some of those CDs. I have some that are terrible for quality. For example my Ted Nugent Free All, really bad quality...

 

[j!m]

Some CDs were made poorly, just like records and tapes had good and bad.

Degradation is generally visible- you can see the corrosion within the disc. If the CD looks good, it generally is good. Meaning, a "bad" sounding CD that looks good was recorded poorly.

Also, many early CDs were recorded using the "emphasis" option. This was a toggled bit that boosted things before the advent of hyper-compression that is standard on all releases since about the mid 90's. Many modern players and/or DACs do not do anything with this bit, so levels can seem to vary wildly. But my old Aragon D2A disables the emphasis, and indicates it is doing so, so all discs are on a level playing field (unless compressed to diamond density as mentioned before).

 

[maxhifi]

I bought most of my records after Cds took over and people were getting rid of records cheaply or giving them away. Was an awesome time to collect records, many people kept them in pristine shape but couldn't dump them fast enough when CDs came out.

 

[j!m]

The wave has crested for super-cheap CDs. Now creaping back up in cost, even in the thrift stores. But not too long ago, mint CDs (some even seald) could be found for $1 or less at thrift stores.

Tag Sales often have a box of them to pick through, but at this point I have pretty much every main-stream CD and don't often find anything I want, that I don't already have.

Still fun to look, however...

 

[Guy Arnold]

I didn't have a working turntable for many years so some of my records were replaced by CDs. Now I have tubs of CDs that I ripped to flac files. All music I get now I just purchase the flac file. Some of the CDs of classic albums sounded dreadful and harsh. They have gotten around to remastering lots of these albums and the new files made from the old tapes sound fantastic. I made flac files off some of the old vinyl and they are a faithful reproduction of the vinyl. Computers and software are great things for music lovers. I have a computer mini tower feeding a schitt dac into some ancient solid state amps. Sonic heaven.

 

[Dan13105]

I've done the opposite. I'm slowly replacing most of my cds with records. In fact, I gave my only cd player to my kid when I built them a stereo system, so I don't even have one in my own system currently.

 

[mrehorst]

The last time I had any means of playing vinyl was the late 70s. Through the early 80s MTV satisfied my interest in music, and a little later I started buying CDs. I have about 150 CDs in boxes, all ripped to HDD decades ago, but I still have a VRDS-20 CD player, so occasionally, when I'm feeling nostalgic, I break out a disc or two and give them a spin.