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Why are CDs the current hot topic?

The way I am seeing prices climb online for CDs, I would appreciate if the vloggers would kindly knock it off with the…

“CDs ARE SOOPER DOOPER BACK BUT THIS TIME TOTALLY FOR REAL!!! EVEN ACTUALLY BIGGER THAN WHEN WE SAID CDs WERE TOTALLY BACK A FEW YEARS AGO!!!”

Please stop. Thank you.
 
Natasha Bell said:
If you really want to have a modern DAC shine, utilize it to play 320kb MP3 or FLAC files, rather than CD (whose capabilities were designed around the limited DAC technology of 1980/81). It will greatly expand the soundstage, even more than it does with CDs. This is the very reason early CD players sounded rather harsh. Some manufacturers, Sony specifically comes to mind, didn't really upgrade their internal DACs until the mid-1990s for all but the most expensive models. This is why Sony players from that period sounded more "sterile" and perhaps "clinical". :)
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But early CD players don't sound harsh. If they had then CD would never have caught on and would have gone the way of Elcaset and all the other failed formats.

You can't think all those Sony engineers listened to their first CD player and said 'Damn thing sounds harsh but screw it, we'll stick it on the market anyway.'?

Of course they probably knew how to build a system with a smooth FR and correct gain staging.

The problem with early CD players was some amplifiers could not handle the 2 volt output so you got clipping on the input which sounds - harsh.

Remember when you got your first CD player and you could barely get the volume dial off zero before it was too loud?

My DAC is a Sony from 1989 - it doesn't have a 'sound', sterile or otherwise, it just sounds like whatever recording I put through it and the soundstage is dictated by what's on the recording, the loudspeakers, and the room.
 
Mart Mccall said:
But early CD players don't sound harsh. If they had then CD would never have caught on and would have gone the way of Elcaset and all the other failed formats.
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I disagree. Early on, we were enraptured by the lack of tape hiss, pops and scratches, the significantly lower noise floor and promise of increased dynamic range. However, it wasn't long before complaints about the medium appeared, that they were sterile sounding and lacked the "warmth" of analog, that they could be, if not harsh, lifeless and in some cases, fatiguing. That said, we traded the fragility of vinyls and tapes for the relative durability and portability of CDs and the convenience of having 72 minutes of music on a side, while telling ourselves that the tradeoffs weren't that bad. Many did the same thing just 15 years later with the onset of MP3s, making the same arguments about portability and convenience, that we could now fit our entire music collections in our shirt pockets.

A few things have changed since the introduction of digital recording and the compact disc nearly 45 years ago: the recording equipment and techniques have improved and are no longer the sole province of exclusive, high-end studios; in many ways, a bedroom musician with a home studio has access to significantly more capable gear than was available in the 80's, at a single digit percentage of the cost. Digital processing chips, clocking and filters, both on the input and output stages, have removed the sterility and coldness from digital media, injecting a liveliness to the formats so that we no longer seriously talk about digital media being "cold;" some have forgotten that we ever had those conversations in the first place, apparently. It wasn't long ago that the CD was nearly declared dead- it took the revival of vinyls, their scarcity and demand inflated cost to rekindle the desire for physical media. with CD's now lower production costs and the abundance of legacy media, it's now seen as a viable option for consumers once again.
 
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I almost never stream while at home and never listen to physical media in the car, always streaming or radio. My car system can't touch the sound quality of my home system, so it all sounds the same in there. I don't care to critically listen in the car, just background noise or something to jam out to.

I don't care to get on the CD train. I own some CDs, but it's just not the same listening experience for me as records.
 
Just saw that there is now another video or two…

Now with even MORE New & Improved CDs are BACK Content Additives! Buy now!!!
 
Natasha Bell said:
Why was this "hiss" not heard on LPs and cassettes?
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For LP's, there was the RIAA curve. When the master disc was made, the softer passages were made louder to eliminate the hiss and louder passages were made softer to eliminate any distortion. Upon playback on a turntable, this would be reversed by the preamp or amplifier, restoring the music to the original recording.

As for tapes, there was Dolby, making the cassette more hi-fi.
 
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RunOutGroove said:
As long as you're happy with what you hearing, I would never try to convince you or anyone else that they need anything else. The whole upgrading gear thing is really for those of us who are prone to thinking "I wonder if I could hear more in this music?" and then trying to answer that question. If you're not asking yourself those kinds of questions then you're wise for not bothering to upgrade gear...
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Totally agree.

No matter what format you listen to or system you have, all that matters is that you enjoy the music.
 
I recall that when CD's were introduced in the early 80's, the quality control on vinyl took a nosedive. On LP's and singles, recycled vinyl was being used, and you would find bits of paper and foreign material embedded in the plastic. Also, there would be scratches and scuffs that were absent on earlier discs. Either this was done because the industry was phasing out vinyl or perhaps to make the CD sound better.
 
For me personally, I like vintage shopping and will pick up a CD or cassette between sales calls to listen in the vehicle. About a year and a half ago I notice huge lots of CDs being dumped at most resellers. Sure GW had a few shelves with a few hundred but they were lame and priced around four dollars previously. Then these walls of CDs (and DVDs) replaced the shelves and they dropped the price to a dollar or under. I started finding really cool early 80's stuff from punk, rock and new wave to much much more. It's like vinyl collecting back when you'd find a ton of good stuff and it was nearly given away. I'm sure there's a group of ex-vinyl collectors now lusting after cheap used CD's.

One of the problems with YouTube is it really is starting to be a huge echo chamber, an audio video pops up that's somewhat interesting and boom, next week there's 30 more just like it. The old stand-by guys/girls are fine but there's a ton of AI versions which kind of bug me, especially when they can't pronounce simple words.

I've always had a stash of vintage players and Discmans, while the newer stuff is uninspiring, the 80's equipment can be pretty cool looking, and amazingly, most still play fine.
 
I still have all my CDs. I gave up on vinyl as soon as I bought my first player, and have never missed it for a second. The swishes, clicks, pops, Discwasher, Zerostat, Disc-O-Film, the stylus cleaning, warped records, etc, I just hated it, and as soon as I had a decent CD burner, the last of my vinyl went to a friend.

I did like the smell of Disc-O-Film though.
 
hemiram said:
I still have all my CDs. I gave up on vinyl as soon as I bought my first player, and have never missed it for a second. The swishes, clicks, pops, Discwasher, Zerostat, Disc-O-Film, the stylus cleaning, warped records, etc, I just hated it, and as soon as I had a decent CD burner, the last of my vinyl went to a friend.

I did like the smell of Disc-O-Film though.
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It was a great way to discover music cheap, and make money at the same time. If the local dig spots didn't kill the deal I would have still been doing it. I sold most of what I came across.
But there is no denying CD's are easier. The CD equivalents of most records I sold I wouldn't be able to get **** for them.
 
Spinning45s said:
I recall that when CD's were introduced in the early 80's, the quality control on vinyl took a nosedive. On LP's and singles, recycled vinyl was being used, and you would find bits of paper and foreign material embedded in the plastic. Also, there would be scratches and scuffs that were absent on earlier discs. Either this was done because the industry was phasing out vinyl or perhaps to make the CD sound better.
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The quality control on LP's took a nosedive way before the 80s and CDs. I remember going to record stores and buying newly released albums in the mid to late 70s, and had to make several trips back to the store to exchange them for ones that didn't have as much surface noise. I grew up when there was nothing but records in the 50s>60s. When CDs came out, it was a blessing. My turntable and LPs mostly bought in the 70s are having a long restful sleep in the closet.
 
I have a playlist with Brahms's third symphony in my Apple Music library, which used to work just fine. I have listened to it many times.
Yesterday evening I put my AirPods on, selected this playlist and went for a walk. But this time, after the first movement it jumped directly to the third. I thought that maybe the sort order had got mixed up. So I took a look in the app. Well, it wasn't that. Imagine my surprise when I saw this:

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The second movement is greyed out.
And when I touch it, it tells me this:

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So, screw Apple. Screw streaming services. :mad:
The CD rules. There's no substitute for a physical object that you hold in your hand and can use whenever you want.
Luckily I also have this symphony on CD. I will rip it on my Mac and will add my own files to the music library, replacing those offered through the subscription service.
I'm so glad I bought it. I will continue buying physical media. Everything that's worth keeping must be in a physical format if you want to be sure that you'll still have it tomorrow.
 
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