God help me I just bought a bunch of CDs

[BUTCH1]

All the CDs I've purchased in the past few years just sound horrible. I'm thinking of buying a turntable and breaking out my vinyl.

There's been a lot of people upset at the "loudness" they are mixed at, kind of hard to explain but they are not using the dynamic range available and compressing everything to get a "wall of sound effect".

 

[DaveSimmons]

I have my 1,000+ CDs ripped to lossless FLAC for my home office setup, then transcoded to MP3 for my iPod. dbPowerAmp does a nice job of ripping (AccurateRip support) and transcoding.

I'm still buying new CDs. I by an MP3 album from Amazon now and then, but usually only if the CD is overpriced like a $16 "deluxe" edition or a $30 import, or it's a $3 album where I don't care about the small drop in quality.

 

[Cerb]

I don't even have a CD player.

Really? Most people still at least have that. All the attempts to get people to go pure internet keep failing, so they're still there (can you stream a movie at the same quality it is on BD everywhere, with every internet connection? No).

 

[Cerb]

OK. My last large audio grab ended up over $200.

"Large," because I hit the thrift stores for interesting finds every week or so, as well. I mean, I like Phil Collins solo, and Mandy Patankin, for that matter, but not enough to pay regular prices.

Most of the "full length" albums on YT are really bad quality, even less than 128Kbbs, it is irrelevant what bitrate what someone uses when burning it to a CD, crap is crap, all a higher bitrate could possibly attain is to stop further degradation.

Yup. Great for finding stuff, but totally not worth it to rip and listen to, any more than long enough to determine if you really like it, or if it's just novel to you. Even poorly mastered music sounds far better with a good rip from CD.

 

[mikeymikec]

Really? Most people still at least have that. All the attempts to get people to go pure internet keep failing, so they're still there (can you stream a movie at the same quality it is on BD everywhere, with every internet connection? No).

At the rate broadband speeds are increasing in more rural parts of the UK, "in my lifetime" seems unlikely as well, unless there's some groundbreaking innovation which doesn't require some sort of cable to be rolled out.

One of my customers only managed to get a "broadband" (ie. not dial-up) connection in the last year or so, and it wasn't for lack of trying. Broadband in quotes because it's half a megabit IIRC. Better than dial-up, certainly.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Well, CD+Digital's, to be exact. Amazon AutoRip. Been dealing with a crap music collection, bunch of skipping ripped CD's from torrents and I told myself I'm not gonna go down that road anymore. So picked up 13 of my favorite albums, all told was less than a $100 bucks. I'll probably come back for another round in a couple months. Feels good to be "legit".

PS - also is awesome to listen to a clean version of my favorite album that i've been listening to a scratched/skipping version of for ages.

Before you spend another $100 on new CDs of your favorite albums, check out Craigslist for people selling CDs. You can find folks selling collections of hundreds of CDs for under $1 each, even as cheap as 20-25 cents if you buy a whole collection. You'll also find folks listing individual CDs for maybe $2-6. If you see something you're looking for, it's a hell of deal. There's a ton of out of print stuff available used if you're fan of genres other than pop/rock.

The condition of the CDs varies widely, but it can be well worth taking the time to check them out. Some people are willing to sell parts of their collection, some only want to dump the whole thing. If you buy a large collection with stuff you don't want, sell it off at a used CD store, thrift store or pawn shop. They'll give you almost nothing, but you can often use the trade value to pick up a few CDs they might have in stock that you want.