If I was doing it as a way to acquire music to listen to, CDs, it’s easier and more convenient to rip them to a computer, they take up less storage space, and are more tolerant of a bit of neglect.
If I’m just looking to collect something for the sake of collecting something, probably vinyl.
My wife is totally into vinyl but I keep telling her, the best it will ever sound is the first time you play it and it degrades just a little bit every time the needle hits it.
CDs are consistent. The same data every play, and it’s easier to rip them to digital.
I personally dislike vinyl for how damaging they are for the environment during production, but from the testing I’ve seen, they don’t really degrade in any meaningful way just from playing them.
Same as I do now, vinyl. If you’re listening to CDs, which are digital, you may as well buy your music digitally from Bandcamp or wherever and you have no need for physical media.
CDs also suffer from bit rot so they won’t last forever, best way to keep them forever is to rip them, but at that point, again, just buy the music digitally.
Vinyl doesn’t give you the best sound quality, it can be annoying to have to flip the record over or change records, but there’s something about it being tangible, it’s a real thing, you can see the grooves, you don’t even need power to play a record. And with care, they’ll last a lot longer than a CD.
Vinyl isn’t a perfect medium, but that’s kinda what makes it so fun and special
Your point is true until you find a lot of music that is mostly accessible via CD only. I’m with you, getting stuff at bandcamp is great. But I have so much music that does not exist any other way that I got a CD player for the PC to rip the cds and find CDs at second hand market (and also, the CDs are so bloody cheap for a lot of good old music)
This is exactly how I feel too. When I want to listen to a record, it’s because I want to interact with the music. I have a whole process with my record equipment, stuff to mess with etc. Turntable, preamp, EQ, amp, speakers. Each is something I can play with. Records are very physical, I can see them and feel them to understand them. It’s a very interactive medium. I actually enjoy flipping the record. And I don’t care if it doesn’t sound as good, I usually buy cheap used records anyway that have a bit of surface noise. It actually feels warm and nostalgic, I enjoy that. It’s like listening to a live recording from the 30s or something. If I want amazing audio quality I’ll just get it digitally. When I listen to records that’s not what I’m going for, I’m going for the experience. It feels more human, where a CD feels clinical and sterile. That’s not how I want to describe an album, personally.
Vinyl, without a doubt. Because it’s analog.
CD’s are lossless 16-bit/44.1 kHz PCM digital audio. You can already get that in file form. Why would you want digital audio that’s stored on media that degrades? It doesn’t sound any different than the digital file…it’s quite literally (not figuratively literally but literally literally) the exact same data.
It’s easy to buy and sell CDs second hand.
With most digital media these days you don’t buy the actual media. You buy a lifetime license. For your life or the life of the host platform. Whichever is shorter.
That was always my argument back in the day.
Technically when you bought any music wether it be 8-track, LP, cassette, or CD, you were purchasing a single-user license for the music and the media was just how the record companies delivered it to you. That’s why Napster and all the piracy that followed it was/is illegal, because you don’t own a license when you copy the digital file.
HOWEVER… Over the many decades I’ve been alive I’ve scratched, twisted, demagnetized, or just plain old lost hundreds of LPs, cassettes, and CDs. Do you think if I requested a new copy of the music that the record companies would send me a replacement?
No, they would not. So I obtained digital replacements by…other means.
CDs so I can rip it and store it on my raid array.
I will buy digital if I can find it ofc.
CDs, hands down. Never liked vinyls for a myriad of reasons.
Neither. CDs are only useful as a digital copy and 700MB is a quick download, and many discs can fit as FLAC on a microSD the size of my pinky nail. It might even be cheaper nowadays for them to mass produce 512 MB micro SD cards to put FLAC albums on them. If anybody wanted physical albums. It would be hilarious to just have a QR code on a tiny cardboard envelope.
If we want analog music, which is a cool idea, we should replace vinyl with something better. We can still use an optical laser disc but encoding stereo audio tracks as analog laser etches rather than zeros and ones. That way we could reduce the cost, and increase the quality at the same time. Might even be able to print them on glass for longevity. Then you might have an audiophile quality LP that doesn’t need to be flipped. Also in terms of longevity - an analog laser recording could be reverse engineered and listened to after the apocalypse, while binary CD format is a bit more opaque.
I find people with huge music collections in fact have no taste in music.
CDs. They take up less space. Especially if you throw the casing away and just have the actual CD. I don’t have any device that can read either so keeping them usable is not a priority.
I’m aware of the correct interpretation of the question but I found this more amusing.
Vinyl. If shit hits the fan and there are no music players left I think I might possibly get vinyl to play manually/mechanically somehow.
With global warming being an issue, I would worry about keeping vinyl records safe.
100% percent possible, Ive used ones that are over 100 years old that use literal needles on the play head
The only thing that really breaks on them is the old elastic wound up with a hand crack to power them (which is relatively replaceable)
Yeah, I’ve seen people play them with £5 notes
I still buy music CDs, and rip them to digital media. CDs are a lot easier to rip to digital media, but vinyl is cooler, but I listen to local music mainly through strawberry media player (or USB stick in a car)
I do digital download for most artists. A lot of my favorite acts sell vinyls with a digital download code included, so I do that sometimes too.
Local marketplace had a really nice turntable for an unreasonable price for a bit and I argued with myself for a while about it. (The same person had sold me a nice set of speakers, just upgrades a lot it seems).
Final product, vinyl wears out, the needle wears out, and it’s finicky. It needs to be level and vibration isolated. The voltage produced is so low it’s highly subject to electrical interference. You need a preamp, which vary widely in quality as well as style - it may be high end but is it to your taste? It’s all a rabbit hole I wasn’t willing to go down for what, ultimately, is a lower quality experience than a CD. You have to dust records and have a microgram scale to balance the tonearm. If it’s not an automatic player it’ll wear a groove at the end of playback if you don’t get up to deal with it. If the power supply is slightly off kilter, it plays too fast or slow, or you need to adjust it.
Now, CDs don’t last forever (as audio storage) and have their faults and loudness war outcome, but they do store high fidelity and provide a mindful listening experience in that you need to get up and open a box and place the CD in the player; they have album art; and they have liner notes sometimes.
So I ended up convincing myself to save the money and frustration.
Vinyl, since I’m buying something that can’t get replicated via other digital means.
CDs
Disk rot is a real issue, but I can make ISOs from them and back them up with my current hardware. Records are all fun and a better decor item, but if data preservation is the goal, I need to be able to make my own copies.
I’ve got both and prefer vinyl. If I was starting from zero now I would focus on CDs. Not everything is available in every format but I think CDs have the most coverage.
How about a new format: large optical media. That way, we get the cover art, lyrics on back, without degradation or wearing out.
Audio laser discs.
