A question for all youse guys about CDs

[Michael]

I have been selling CDs for about two years now, helping FreeJazz (Scott) 'move the rock', as his wife says.  Occassionally the market is good for more obscure titles and labels.   Not so much for the more common titles.   And with the virus putting a damper on life as we know it, its hard to tell business is slow (but steady) due to people being frugal or the market always like this and  is not going to get better.  I hope its the latter.

If you contact Dusty Groove,  I would expect them to offer you about $1 a disc.  Maybe more for rare valuable titles, but they have to pay people to organize, research and list the discs as well as process the orders.    Those folks hopefully don't work as cheap as me!!!!  

Good luck!

Mike

[felser]

56 minutes ago, Daniel A said:

I promise you that I am not trolling now, but I've got a question to all of you who prefer CDs to digital formats which are not based on plastic discs: do you prefer them only because of the packaging (booklets, liner notes) or also out of a feeling of "safety" for owning "physical" copies (or for any other reason)?

I like the fact that it a CD is an object I can hold, collect, display, organize, look at.  I like the artwork and often the liner notes and other info.  I like that CD's are a commodity, I can resell them if I don't want to keep them, helping defray the cost of chance-taking and of upgrading/downgrading to a different set of the same music.   I like that I can "own" a CD, a file doesn't feel the same.  I also prefer physical books to ebooks/pdf's for some of the same reason, plus they are more enjoyable to read for me.   I am totally willing to accept that mine are subjective preferences and that there are benefits to the downloads/ebooks.

 

[sgcim]

Look man, just sell me all your Dick Katz and Davey Schildkraut records/CDs I don't have, and we'll call it a day!

[cliffpeterson]

"I like the fact that it a CD is an object I can hold, collect, display, organize, look at.  I like the artwork and often the liner notes and other info.  I like that CD's are a commodity, I can resell them if I don't want to keep them, helping defray the cost of chance-taking and of upgrading/downgrading to a different set of the same music.   I like that I can "own" a CD, a file doesn't feel the same.  I also prefer physical books to ebooks/pdf's for some of the same reason, plus they are more enjoyable to read for me.   I am totally willing to accept that mine are subjective preferences and that there are benefits to the downloads/ebooks."

 

What Felser said above.

Edited August 29, 2020 by cliffpeterson

[Tom in RI]

A little embarrassing to admit, it’s easier for me to keep track of cd’s vs downloads. I get that it should be just as easy to keep files in a folder on a drive. I am digitally disorganized. I actually have quite a few downloads from several ROIO sites and blogs which generally incorporate at least 5 or 6 different naming conventions. I keep pretending I’ll organize it in slack time, but it’s almost 20 years of downloads, most from the 1st ten years or so were burned to cdr, hard drives having been not so large and quite a bit pricier the further back in time you go.

Edited August 29, 2020 by Tom in RI
More important info

[jazzmusicdepot]

Cd's pay my bills! 

[lipi]

6 hours ago, T.D. said:

purchasing a suitable DAC to play the files through my sound system

OK, I promise that, like Daniel, I am not trolling when I ask this.

Have you tried just running an audio cable (mini plug to mini plug or mini plug to RCA) from your computer's out to your amplifier's in? If so, where did it fall short?

[HutchFan]

6 hours ago, felser said:

I like the fact that it a CD is an object I can hold, collect, display, organize, look at.  I like the artwork and often the liner notes and other info.  I like that CD's are a commodity, I can resell them if I don't want to keep them, helping defray the cost of chance-taking and of upgrading/downgrading to a different set of the same music.   I like that I can "own" a CD, a file doesn't feel the same.  I also prefer physical books to ebooks/pdf's for some of the same reason, plus they are more enjoyable to read for me.   I am totally willing to accept that mine are subjective preferences and that there are benefits to the downloads/ebooks.

Yep.  That right there.   

 

[Dave Garrett]

8 hours ago, Daniel A said:

I promise you that I am not trolling now, but I've got a question to all of you who prefer CDs to digital formats which are not based on plastic discs: do you prefer them only because of the packaging (booklets, liner notes) or also out of a feeling of "safety" for owning "physical" copies (or for any other reason)?

The reason for my question is the sometimes stated, sometimes implied, argument that CDs are a safer way to keep music than as files stored in another manner. But the fact is that hard drives, clouds and compact discs are only different ways of storing the same digital files. There are many safe ways to store digital data, and most often they are based on redundancy. CDs can get scratched, they can "rot", be stolen, lost or burn. A file storage solution based on multiple copies in different locations (as in local drive plus cloud) would probably be much safer.

Quite true, but I would hazard a guess that many people, even those who know better, are nowhere near as diligent as they should be when it comes to keeping backups of their digital data current. If you have a bunch of external USB drives sitting around that only get backed up occasionally, if ever, I would posit that the risk of one of those hard drives failing is far higher than that of CDs getting damaged, lost, stolen, etc. Hard drives have a finite lifespan that, all other things being equal, is much shorter than that of a CD.  

There's also the issue of user error as related to specific software used to manage digital music libraries, leading to the loss of digital music files. As an example, I've seen more than a few complaints from pissed-off iTunes users who accidentally nuked their libraries when something in the feature set changed during one of Apple's upgrades and they weren't aware of the consequences. That's not going to happen with a CD. 

[Brad]

10 hours ago, Daniel A said:

I promise you that I am not trolling now, but I've got a question to all of you who prefer CDs to digital formats which are not based on plastic discs: do you prefer them only because of the packaging (booklets, liner notes) or also out of a feeling of "safety" for owning "physical" copies (or for any other reason)?

The reason for my question is the sometimes stated, sometimes implied, argument that CDs are a safer way to keep music than as files stored in another manner. But the fact is that hard drives, clouds and compact discs are only different ways of storing the same digital files. There are many safe ways to store digital data, and most often they are based on redundancy. CDs can get scratched, they can "rot", be stolen, lost or burn. A file storage solution based on multiple copies in different locations (as in local drive plus cloud) would probably be much safer. Ask a bank how they store critical data (it will not be as discs or printouts). 🙂 

I appreciate physical product myself; these days primarily enjoyed in the form of LPs. But the "safety" argument has long seemed flawed to me. But feel free to put me straight. 😄

Nothing to do with safety, I just prefer owning a physical object that you can feel and has all the attributes of property. Digital media doesn’t have any of those qualities and your playing is dependent on someone else (servers, etc.). That is one reason why I’ve come to like LPs.  For lack of a better term, it’s interactive, more so than CDs and definitely more than digital. 

[Daniel A]

Thanks for your comments. As stated, I prefer the handling and overall experience of playing an LP to streaming or playing a file. But I have found it increasingly less likely that I will pull out a CD when I can play the same music digitally without doing so. Maybe it's just the dreaded 21st century lazyness... (Have you ever found yourselves googling for information that you could get in seconds by just getting up, like measurements for an object in your home? 🙂) 

[Hot Ptah]

I am buying CDs, more than ever. 

[porcy62]

10 hours ago, lipi said:

OK, I promise that, like Daniel, I am not trolling when I ask this.

Have you tried just running an audio cable (mini plug to mini plug or mini plug to RCA) from your computer's out to your amplifier's in? If so, where did it fall short?

From the PC headphone output into amp line in? Yes, and it sounds bad because headphone output isn't a line input and the PC headphone output usually sucks. Not trolling, promise.

Edited August 30, 2020 by porcy62

[Dan Gould]

38 minutes ago, porcy62 said:

From the PC headphone output into amp line in? Yes, and it sounds bad because headphone output isn't a line input and the PC headphone output usually sucks. Not trolling, promise.

Why exactly would headphone output not deliver a decent sound to the next part of the chain? For people with $300 headphones on - wouldn't they say, WTF this sounds like shit?

I have recently streamed some music and when I did I ran a mini plug cable from headphone output in front to line-in in the back and recorded via Goldwave. No degradation in the sound whatsoever.

[porcy62]

6 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:

Why exactly would headphone output not deliver a decent sound to the next part of the chain? For people with $300 headphones on - wouldn't they say, WTF this sounds like shit?

I have recently streamed some music and when I did I ran a mini plug cable from headphone output in front to line-in in the back and recorded via Goldwave. No degradation in the sound whatsoever.

I said "usually PC headphone output sucks". There are stand alone headphone amps that make sound gorgeous a $300 headphone. The output of my Mac into my preamp sounds bad. My experience.

[Niko]

11 hours ago, Tom in RI said:

A little embarrassing to admit, it’s easier for me to keep track of cd’s vs downloads. I get that it should be just as easy to keep files in a folder on a drive. I am digitally disorganized. I actually have quite a few downloads from several ROIO sites and blogs which generally incorporate at least 5 or 6 different naming conventions. I keep pretending I’ll organize it in slack time, but it’s almost 20 years of downloads, most from the 1st ten years or so were burned to cdr, hard drives having been not so large and quite a bit pricier the further back in time you go.

same here, basically, I really don't like the thought of having 3000 albums in 3000 folders on a hard drive that I have to organize and back-up myself... it's not a matter of ability, there are some poor souls out there whose job consists to a significant part of working with a database frontend I programmed as a student... it's a matter of taste... I like it that I can, say, put the Joe Gordon album with Jimmy Woods next to the Jimmy Woods albums in close proximity of my small Horace Tapscott collection on the one side and my Sonny Criss albums on the other which then lead, e.g., into the West Coast Jazz corner... you can argue that I pay a high price for being able to stand in front of my collection and letting my mind wander from one corner to the next... but I enjoy it tremendously, and at the moment I also have enough space... it's just nice to walk into my room and have it all there... booklets are another topic, I like to have them around overall, being as objectively reasonable as possible it not one of my goals as a jazz fan... 

regarding streaming and the audio setup, I have active boxes with a blue tooth receiver... the cd player is directly connected to the boxes with a cable but my player for the LPs is connected via bluetooth in the same way I connect my laptop or my phone (the guy in the audio store was a bit shocked that someone want to buy a player like that... are you actually gonna use the bluetooth? he asked...)... and, admittedly, it does happen with some regularity that I am too lazy to dig out a CD I own and just stream it with spotify...

regarding buying, I am mostly buying used LPs by now, also used CDs if I can find them... for new releases it's still mostly CDs but also some downloads via bandcamp if there is no better option...  I like physical stores and at least here in the Netherlands the possibilities for buying used CDs are very limited by now, only two really good shops I am aware of, buying LPs is just more fun... what I buy in terms of used CDs, I buy almost exclusively at discogs.

 

[felser]

58 minutes ago, Niko said:

... you can argue that I pay a high price for being able to stand in front of my collection and letting my mind wander from one corner to the next...

Not always.  I find downloads to be grossly overpriced in many situations, and can often find a used CD for less than the cost of a download of the same music.

[Niko]

28 minutes ago, felser said:

Not always.  I find downloads to be grossly overpriced in many situations, and can often find a used CD for less than the cost of a download of the same music.

indeed, downloads tend to be quite pricey in comparison, probably because most people who buy them would never bother with the CD... in particular, if it's something I can stream "for free" on spotify, the added value of having a file on some harddrive is almost zero to me... even if it should be pulled from spotify at some point, I can usually still wait with buying a download until then because that one's unlikely to go out of print... in that situation, buying the download is almost purely a donation to the artist (which may be well-deserved)

[Dan Gould]

1 hour ago, porcy62 said:

I said "usually PC headphone output sucks". There are stand alone headphone amps that make sound gorgeous a $300 headphone. The output of my Mac into my preamp sounds bad. My experience.

You actually said " headphone output isn't a line input  " and that is what I was disputing.

My headphone amp came standard on a 2007 Windows machine.

[lipi]

3 hours ago, porcy62 said:

From the PC headphone output into amp line in? Yes, and it sounds bad because headphone output isn't a line input and the PC headphone output usually sucks. Not trolling, promise.

I assume you meant to write "headphone output isn't a line output" there. If so, is the issue that the signal has passed through an amplifier stage already, or is the issue that the impedance is lower?

And can you elaborate on "usually sucks"? Distorted? Cut-off? Compressed?

I would love to hear from others (T.D.?), too.

[porcy62]

1 hour ago, lipi said:

I assume you meant to write "headphone output isn't a line output" there. If so, is the issue that the signal has passed through an amplifier stage already, or is the issue that the impedance is lower?

And can you elaborate on "usually sucks"? Distorted? Cut-off? Compressed?

I would love to hear from others (T.D.?), too.

Yes, I meant that. A digital signal in a PC pass throu a D/A converter and an amp, amp designed to handle the headphone. The amp of a source is designed to handle the preamp section of an integrated amp, or a preamp. I am not an engineer, but I know they handle different impedences. I assume that the D/A converter and the amp of headphone of a pc aren't the state of art, anyway when I hooked the PC at the hifi the sound was absolutely flat and a little bit compressed, at high volume was a pain. BTW I compared the cd and the Mac because I have all my cds on an external HD and I'd have appreciated the ease of playing music without handle cds. I guess a decent external D/A converter hooked at the Mac might sound better.

1 hour ago, Dan Gould said:

You actually said " headphone output isn't a line input  " and that is what I was disputing.

My headphone amp came standard on a 2007 Windows machine.

I was wrong I meant "headphone output isn't a line OUPUT", sorry.

Edited August 30, 2020 by porcy62

[mjzee]

56 minutes ago, porcy62 said:

Yes, I meant that. A digital signal in a PC pass throu a D/A converter and an amp, amp designed to handle the headphone. The amp of a source is designed to handle the preamp section of an integrated amp, or a preamp. I am not an engineer, but I know they handle different impedences. I assume that the D/A converter and the amp of headphone of a pc aren't the state of art, anyway when I hooked the PC at the hifi the sound was absolutely flat and a little bit compressed, at high volume was a pain. BTW I compared the cd and the Mac because I have all my cds on an external HD and I'd have appreciated the ease of playing music without handle cds. I guess a decent external D/A converter hooked at the Mac might sound better.

As I understand it, one issue is the quality of the D/A converter in the Mac.  I stream from my Mac to a dedicated D/A converter that's part of my stereo system.  (It's mostly Emotiva components: separate D/A converter, preamp, amp.)  The Mac then doesn't need to be physically connected to my stereo.

Edited August 30, 2020 by mjzee

[porcy62]

2 hours ago, mjzee said:

As I understand it, one issue is the quality of the D/A converter in the Mac.  I stream from my Mac to a dedicated D/A converter that's part of my stereo system.  (It's mostly Emotiva components: separate D/A converter, preamp, amp.)  The Mac then doesn't need to be physically connected to my stereo.

That makes a lot of sense.

Edit: and it will solve the problem of the pc headphone output, converting digital into line signal.

Edited August 30, 2020 by porcy62

[mjzee]

I need to add this important point: The signal goes from my Mac to an AirPort Express (the Mac can't send anything directly to a DAC).  A digital audio cable connects the AirPort Express to the DAC.

To recap, this is the audio path: iMac sends digital signal over house wifi from iTunes/Music program to AirPort Express.  Digital audio cable from AirPort Express to Emotiva DAC.  DAC to preamp/amp/speakers.

The nice thing about this setup is: I have multiple sets of powered speakers set up throughout the house.  Each is connected to either an AirPort Express or Apple TV (3rd generation).  So I can choose which speakers to send the music to, even to all of them at the same time if I want.  Further, using the AirFoil program, I'm not limited to sending audio only from iTunes/Music; instead, I can send from anything playing on my iMac (YouTube, videos posted here on Organissimo, streaming programs, etc.).

Edited August 30, 2020 by mjzee

[porcy62]

3 minutes ago, mjzee said:

I need to add this important point: The signal goes from my Mac to an AirPort Express (the Mac can't send anything directly to a DAC).  A digital audio cable connects the AirPort Express to the DAC.

To recap, this is the audio path: iMac sends digital signal over house wifi from iTunes/Music program to AirPort Express.  Digital audio cable from AirPort Express to Emotiva DAC.  DAC to preamp/amp/speakers.

The nice thing about this setup is: I have multiple sets of powered speakers set up throughout the house.  Each is connected to either an AirPort Express or Apple TV (3rd generation).  So I can choose which speakers to send the music to, even to all of them at the same time if I want.  Further, using the AirFoil program, I'm not limited to sending audio only from iTunes/Music; instead, I can send from anything playing on my iMac (YouTube, videos posted here on Organissimo, streaming programs, etc.).

I had a similiar set up in my bar, when I run it.