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The Compact Disc Revival?

L

Lossless

Super Member
We have had the vinyl record revival, cassette tapes, and now Pro-Ject top-loading CD Box RS2 T is a CD transport anticipating the revival of the vintage compact disc. Do you think that possessing the actual physical media is driving these buying patterns? I still enjoy my hundreds of CDs, looking at the cover art, reading the inserts, and displaying the cover while playing. Thought's welcome.
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Anything we coveted when we were young has a good chance of being coveted again when we're older. It's certainly been seen to be the case for vintage vinyl, cassettes, 8-tracks, reel-to-reel, hi-fi in general, appliances, cars, motorcycles, clocks, watches, videogames, you name it.

For the same reason, I'd not be surprised to eventually see collector revivals of vintage MP3 players and iPods and mobile phones, just as there are already collector revivals of vintage computers and videogame consoles.
 
Lossless said:
Do you think that possessing the actual physical media is driving these buying patterns?
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Depends on the person. I don't care if I have a disk, and I can look up any info, which I never read, online if I'm so inclined.
All about the music.
 
DaveVoorhis said:
Anything we coveted when we were young has a good chance of being coveted again when we're older.

For the same reason, I'd not be surprised to eventually see collector revivals of vintage MP3 players and iPods
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iPod Classic 5.5 gen year 2005 / Sennheiser PX100 v.1 year 2003
I may then already be ahead of the game. People with their AirPods look at me like :wtf:
 
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With the increase in hard drive storage and drive cost going down, ripping compact disc is easier than even. But to me there is still a lot to said being able to physically hold your media in your hand. Finally the cost; .10 to .50 cents each for used CD's at my local thrift store can't be beat.
 
Lossless said:
View attachment 1488505
iPod Classic 5.5 gen year 2005 / Sennheiser PX100 v.1 year 2003
I may then already be ahead of the game. People with their AirPods look at me like :wtf:
Click to expand...
Pfft, amateur..........
ipod2g.jpg

Second generation 20GB model, circa 2002. Still works, though battery life isn't what it once was. Also have an original first gen 5GB model with a mechanical 'clickwheel' which looks similar, plus several other early iPods with B&W screens, and several later models as well. A few of them have failed hard drives, but most of them (including the earliest two) still spin up and play just fine.
-Adam
 
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I think that pro-ject player is a great form-factor--I have a small space, not a lot of room on my shelf. It's hard to justify a full sized component just to play CDs, so I just rip them to the computer. So a little CD player that I could tuck in a corner or wherever--got excited about the pro-ject until I checked the price--it was about $2400 more than I expected it to be, alas. Why is the small, modestly priced mid-fi cd player or transport not more of a thing?
 
malvo said:
Why is the small, modestly priced mid-fi cd player or transport not more of a thing?
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The CD drive itself is cheap -- I see them on Amazon for about £15 -- but it needs a power supply, case, and sufficient computational horsepower to convert the SATA interface on the drive to a typical digital audio interface. That puts it in slightly more expensive territory -- such as a desktop or "media centre" computer -- but there are reasonably-priced standalone CD transports available from Cambridge Audio, Audiolab, Marantz, Denon, etc.

Portable CD players with an analog output are still sold. I've seen them for as little as £20, so likely available at roughly the same price point in US$.

Or, you can use an inexpensive DVD player, which will invariably play CDs. That seems to be what a lot of non-audiophile folks use these days.
 
I haven't shopped portables before now--I will have a look round, thanks. DVD players: I've tried this route before, and the inexpensive small form factor DVD players that passed through here were pretty frustrating. Two of them...both quite cheap, but both had strangely long lag time in ejecting the disc, neither a very responsive remote. Could be bad luck with my amazon shopping, or it could be that at my end of the price scale a decent small disc transport just isn't going to happen. I've ogled that Cambridge transport in the past--it's right at a price I could live with and sounds a nicely built machine--but it's full sized and thus back to my "problem" of too many components in a small space in a small apartment. Maybe if this CD revival becomes a thing we might see more products like this pro-ject, and hopefully at a wider variety of price points.
 
Larger means a more stable platform, maybe a larger power supply, etc. I don't use my VHS tape sized BluRay DVD player for music reproduction, the vintage Sony pictured above slaughters it.
 
AdamAnt316 said:
Pfft, amateur..........
ipod2g.jpg

Second generation 20GB model, circa 2002. Still works, though battery life isn't what it once was. Also have an original first gen 5GB model with a mechanical 'clickwheel' which looks similar, plus several other early iPods with B&W screens, and several later models as well. A few of them have failed hard drives, but most of them (including the earliest two) still spin up and play just fine.
-Adam
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Cool... Did those models ship with the Wolfson DAC also? Just curious.
 
Lossless said:
We have had the vinyl record revival, cassette tapes, and now Pro-Ject top-loading CD Box RS2 T is a CD transport anticipating the revival of the vintage compact disc. Do you think that possessing the actual physical media is driving these buying patterns? I still enjoy my hundreds of CDs, looking at the cover art, reading the inserts, and displaying the cover while playing. Thought's welcome.View attachment 1488472
Click to expand...
be a good title for an album...
 
CD never really went away, and I don't see them "vanishing" anytime soon. Dedicated CDPs have certainly fallen out of favor, because pretty much anything with a transport can play a CD, so multi-format players became more popular. Why buy 2 or 3 full-sized components to do what one component can do?

I don't know if I see a CD "resurgence", I see record stores carrying more and more new/re-issue vinyl than CDs, but the used market is certainly "booming". Remember when folks were literally giving away entire album collections, or pretty much anything you searched for on vinyl could be found (eventually) in a "dollar bin" somewhere? That is where CDs are now. People have moved on to digital streaming, or ripped their entire CD collections to digital storage and are ditching their CD collections as a matter of convenience and space/storage considerations.

That's just my take on it FWIW--which is not much--that and a couple bucks will get you a cup of coffee ;)
 
They had a resurgence for me over the last 6 months. This will be the 3rd and last time I try to go CD's instead of Vinyls. Already gave my player away now its time to pass along the CD's.

:beerchug:
 
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