Poll: Do you use optical drives in 2023?

[nOOky]

I did a quick search on Amazon for Lady Gaga. $10 for a CD and then I can have the CD and rip it loselessly to a hard drive. That's one of the reasons I still have one... I can't always stream music if my phone doesn't have service.

 

[Oyeve]

I just picked a random Taylor Swift album (Midnights) from Amazon UK, it's actually £2 more expensive in mp3 format than on CD brand-new. Same goes for RHCP - By The Way.

Frankly I'd be happy to pay £2 more for a CD to ensure I can choose the format that I rip it to. I've considered going back through my collection and re-ripping for various reasons / quality levels.

I started re-ripping CDs that I ripped years/decades ago because back then HD space was a premium so I ripped at a lesser quality then to save space. But not that I have terabytes of storage available I decided to re-rip at the highest quality.

 

[WilliamM2]

Fair enough. An extra 4 or 5 dollars here and there may be too much for some to handle over a $14 used disc.

If you are paying $14 for used CD's, you are doing it wrong.

But I never buy used, I can afford new easily, and it's still usually under $10.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I have a bluray burner in one of my systems. I use it to rip and transcode my bluray collection. And to play my old games which I have no interest in trying to hunt down cracks for.

 

[A///]

I just picked a random Taylor Swift album (Midnights) from Amazon UK, it's actually £2 more expensive in mp3 format than on CD brand-new. Same goes for RHCP - By The Way.

Frankly I'd be happy to pay £2 more for a CD to ensure I can choose the format that I rip it to. I've considered going back through my collection and re-ripping for various reasons / quality levels.

that is mp3, I was referring to flac or wav downloads yes they exist.

 

[A///]

If you are paying $14 for used CD's, you are doing it wrong.

But I never buy used, I can afford new easily, and it's still usually under $10.

I only went by what I could find on google. most of the cd places have closed up shop in the places I've lived. once vhs and cassette audio fell out of fashion they relied on cd sales and once buying music online became common place they shuttered. mind sharing where I could find new cds for under $10? ever since I bought this place I never got around to unboxing all my film and audio equipment. I've made do with the the rinky dinky bluetooth speaker my niece bought me, which is not bad for its size. easy to clean with sawdust and sanded paint landing on it every weekend.

 

[WilliamM2]

I only went by what I could find on google. most of the cd places have closed up shop in the places I've lived. once vhs and cassette audio fell out of fashion they relied on cd sales and once buying music online became common place they shuttered. mind sharing where I could find new cds for under $10? ever since I bought this place I never got around to unboxing all my film and audio equipment. I've made do with the the rinky dinky bluetooth speaker my niece bought me, which is not bad for its size. easy to clean with sawdust and sanded paint landing on it every weekend.

I buy most my CD's at Amazon, some are more than others, Barnes and Noble has great sales to, as cheap as $5 each:

$4.99 CD Sale, Music

Explore our list of $4.99 CD Sale, Music at Barnes & Noble®. Get your order fast and stress free with free curbside pickup.

www.barnesandnoble.com

 

[kschendel]

I have a portable USB drive that I use for playing Mission Impossible DVD's when I'm traveling.

I built an optical drive into my primary build back in 2018. I think I've used it 3 or 4 times - hardly worth it.

 

[Hotrod2go]

I like watching fav TV/Movie shows on disc via a dedicated media player. Never use any streaming services & not plan too.
You can't beat holding the actual physical media in your hands that you legally purchased & now own. Sure I could do that with a flash drive or card but they haven't proved themselves reliable at holding data over successive years of storage & random use like optical discs have the last 25 yrs or more.

 

[jamesdsimone]

Annoying that you can't get a laptop with an internal optical drive. I use an external but getting the laptop to recognize them is a pain.

 

[Ronstang]

If you are paying $14 for used CD's, you are doing it wrong.

But I never buy used, I can afford new easily, and it's still usually under $10.

That is false. Maybe for new release junk music or yesteryear bands' compilations but if you are looking for SPECIFIC pressings that are 30 or 40 years old then I would pay $14 for a certain CD if I had to have it. Not all music or CDs are created equally and for music made before the widespread adoption of the CD the pressing you buy once they found their way to CD is paramount if you like music.

In 1990 most music companies dumped their entire catalog of old master tapes....yes tapes...onto CD as originally mastered. Then over the next decade many of the more popular releases got "remastered" but were not actually remastered....they simply turned the gain up on all channels effectively compressing the music and ruining the dynamic range and the sound completely. Many of these "brickwalled remasters" were released under the same catalog number so 30+ years later finding the right disc can be hard and most sellers on Amazon have no clue....but those that do sometimes have a premium price on the correct pressing....and it's worth ever dollar as the improper remasters are complete crap.

And this is why used CDs are sometimes the only source for the proper pressing. And unlike you I almost always buy the used CD unless the price of new is within a couple dollars on the verified pressing. The reason being if you use the right kind of ripping software you can verify if the CD you ripped is in good shape because it will return Accurate Rip details from the database. If all tracks but one or two are accurate that means there is a scratch of blemish on the CD which may or may not affect playback....but with this information I have been refunded on Amazon any CD which did not rip accurately and then I buy another. Sometimes I save tons of money on used CDs yet I still have a perfectly ripped version on my hard drive in FLAC to do whatever I want with in the future.

Being able to afford the new is not the issue....but wasting money for no reason is something smart people don't do. I have saved enough on used CDs to pay for probably half my collection so if I had bought new I would have half the amount....yet even though used I have perfect accurate rips of all my CDs on hard drives so from a practical standpoint my collection is no different from one ripped from all new CDs....except I saved 50%.

 

[WilliamM2]

That is false. Maybe for new release junk music or yesteryear bands' compilations but if you are looking for SPECIFIC pressings that are 30 or 40 years old then I would pay $14 for a certain CD if I had to have it. Not all music or CDs are created equally and for music made before the widespread adoption of the CD the pressing you buy once they found their way to CD is paramount if you like music.

In 1990 most music companies dumped their entire catalog of old master tapes....yes tapes...onto CD as originally mastered. Then over the next decade many of the more popular releases got "remastered" but were not actually remastered....they simply turned the gain up on all channels effectively compressing the music and ruining the dynamic range and the sound completely. Many of these "brickwalled remasters" were released under the same catalog number so 30+ years later finding the right disc can be hard and most sellers on Amazon have no clue....but those that do sometimes have a premium price on the correct pressing....and it's worth ever dollar as the improper remasters are complete crap.

And this is why used CDs are sometimes the only source for the proper pressing. And unlike you I almost always buy the used CD unless the price of new is within a couple dollars on the verified pressing. The reason being if you ue the right skind of ripping software you can verify if the CD you ripped is in good shape because it will return Accurate Rip details from the database. If all tracks but one or two are accurate that means there is a scratch of blemish on the CD which may or may not affect playback....but with this information I have been refunded on Amazon any CD which did not rip accurately and then I buy another. Sometimes I save tons of money on used CDs yet I still have a perfectly ripped version on my hard drive in FLAC to do whatever I want with in the future.

Being able to afford the new is not the issue....but wasting money for no reason is something smart people don't do. I have saved enough on used CDs to pay for probably half my collection so if I had bought new I would have half the amount....yet even though used I have perfect accurate rips of all my CDs on hard drives so from a practical standpoint my collection is no different from one ripped from all new CDs....except I saved 50%.

Guess it's a good thing I bought all my 30 to 40 year old pressings 30 or 40 years ago. You'ra probably too young to remember CD clubs, when you could get a dozen for free, and then had to buy 2 or 3 at regular price. I think those worked out to be less than $2 or $3 each. I don't buy anything that says "re-mastered, as they have usually ruined it.

I only buy a few CD's a year now, and it's never more than $10, usually closer to $5. And you can get errors on brand new CD's with Accurip, surprised such a knowledgable person such as yourself didn't know that.

 

[Ronstang]

You'ra probably too young to remember CD clubs

LOLOLOL......I'm 60, I remember the CD clubs but never did them because their selection was crap by my standards. They were great for compilations but I don't buy those. I come from the album rock era....I listen to the whole album.

 

[WilliamM2]

LOLOLOL......I'm 60, I remember the CD clubs but never did them because their selection was crap by my standards. They were great for compilations but I don't buy those. I come from the album rock era....I listen to the whole album.

Same here (59). I found plenty to pick from back then, they were slowly releasing ALL lp's on CD. I find it a lot harder to find anything worth buying these days.

I have a friend that buys all his CD's used. I guess they are $1 or $2 at Goodwill, Pawn shops, and second hand stores.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Nope, I was concerned about not having one due to my case design but I really like the case so I figured if I really needed an optical drive I could pull the drive from my old machine and us that until I acquired a proper usb drive.
That hasn’t happened.
It has been nearly 4 years.

 

[Ronstang]

And you can get errors on brand new CD's with Accurip, surprised such a knowledgable person such as yourself didn't know that.

OH yeah.....I've seen it but it's usually a track or few and many times they show accurately ripped on another in the list and the tracks that showed accurately ripped now show not....which indicates a pressing that is probably not in the database which means they are likely a re-pressing that could come from several sources. It's hard to tell sometimes when you are dealing with music that is 40+ years old.

When I get errors on used CDs with visible wear it's just safer to get another disc....but in all honesty....I have some really rare pressings that show some tracks are not ripped accurately that play fine so in the end it really doesn't matter because if there is an audible error it is so slight it goes unnoticed by me at least.

 

[MalVeauX]

I use optical for archival backups of things I want to have high odds of keeping over time. So I have 3 to 4 separate physical copies of important data sets. Two of these copies are on separated redundant hard discs. The third is cloud. The 4th is optical archival media. Some DVD and some BluRay. Optical is one of the better options for long term storage for a living or archival data set as long as its not the sole copy, especially for cost and accessibility for users without getting into unknowns for most people.

Very best,