6 reasons why audiophiles love CDs in the streaming age - do you agree?

https://www.pocket-lint.com/reasons-why-audiophiles-listen-to-cds/

Summary
CDs offer lossless audio with great dynamic range
You can own music on a CD, controlling your access
CDs make it easy to listen to albums from start to finish

CDs are an incredible way to listen to music that people really put by the wayside in the era of streaming. But they’re making a comeback in the wake of the comeback of vinyl and with an increased interest in retro tech. But this entire time, many audiophiles have sworn by CDs over streaming, and many even prefer CDs over vinyl.

So anyone that is beginning to wander outside of the world of streaming and into physical formats might wonder why CDs are so great, and why audiophiles love listening to them and collecting them. Reasons range from audio quality reasons to the actual experience of putting a CD in a CD player, and different people will prioritize some things over others when it comes to attesting to their enjoyment of CDs. So here are a few reasons why audiophiles love listening to CDs.

1 CDs give you lossless audio with great dynamic range

They sound so much better than an MP3 file on your laptop

Possibly the best part about listening to a CD is that the audio quality is wonderful. CDs have lossless audio with a transfer rate of 16-bit/44.1kHz, meaning you get tracks with a low noise floor and great dynamic range, so you can hear individual instruments and overall more frequencies than you would hear with a compressed format like MP3.

“Lossless” refers to audio that retains the original detail of the track. These can still be compressed files, but less compressed than a file format like an MP3.

While you can get lossless audio digitally, like by buying tracks in CD quality or on streaming services that have lossless as an option, having the tracks in CD form also means you can listen to lossless audio in more ways. You can listen to them in the car, in a larger stereo system, and you own the CD, rather than the tracks existing on your phone or computer at the whim of a company.

2 You can’t own the music on a streaming service, but you can own a CD

Being able to keep the songs on a disk and on your computer is extremely convenient

Going off of the last point, getting to own a CD is an underrated aspect of CDs in the streaming age. People prefer streaming because it’s convenient and seems cheaper than buying individual CDs, but it also means that whether or not you can access a track is not in your control, but rather the control of the streaming service or whoever owns the track.

Additionally, CDs allow you to enjoy the CD both in its physical form, but also as digital files on your computer. It’s extremely easy to rip a CD and enjoy the files without having to put a CD in a drive, so you always have access to your favorite lossless albums.

3 The format incentivizes listening to an album from start to finish

Artists lay out albums with intention, and CDs make it easier to listen with intention

If you pop a CD into a CD player, chances are, you’re probably going to listen to the whole album all the way through. Sure, you can skip tracks, or you can change the CD, but the best way to enjoy it is by listening to the whole album as the artist intended.

Listening to a CD from beginning to end as the artist laid it out feels much more authentic to the listening experience.

Of course you can listen to an album all the way through on a streaming service just as easily, but people tend to gravitate toward playlists rather than whole albums. Listening to a CD from beginning to end as the artist laid it out feels much more authentic to the listening experience, and listening to music on a CD incentivizes that artistic experience.

4 CDs are cheaper than vinyl and still sound wonderful

Personal taste will vary, but CDs technically feature better sound quality

Audiophiles often love vinyl too, much of the time more than they love CDs, but CDs tend to be a lot more affordable than vinyl, and still have a lot of the same benefits. The fact that it’s a physical format of music, listening to it requires some more steps than streaming, and that it can double as visual art as well as sonically, those tie the two formats together in similarity. But CDs have technically better sound quality if you’re going for dynamic range and a low noise floor, so you’re getting fantastic sound for much cheaper.

Additionally, CDs are a lot easier to store and transport than vinyl records, so you don’t need as much space to store the same amount of CDs as vinyl. So while audiophiles may love vinyl records a lot, CDs are just more convenient and have added auditory benefits to boot.

5 CDs give you a physical connection to the album

You can hold a CD, not an album on Spotify

Having a physical album in your hands can make you feel a lot more connected to the art as a whole. On a streaming service, tracks and albums are just there in your computer. But holding a CD is tangible, it’s something you can see, feel, and hear.

Holding a CD is tangible, it’s something you can see, feel, and hear.

Additionally, putting a CD in a CD player or drive can feel better than just clicking on a song to stream it. It takes more steps, and it’s not as convenient, but the extra steps can make it feel even better to listen to a CD. In the same way that putting a vinyl record on a turntable can be part of a ritual, a CD can be part of a listening ritual as well.

6 CDs are fun to collect and display

Being an audiophile is about more than just what goes into your ears

Being able to accumulate CDs, display them, and have a visible library of music is a wonderful benefit of listening to CDs. Audiophiles not only like to enjoy the music itself, but their love of sound can tie in with a love of collecting things. Collecting albums and having a catalog to both enjoy for yourself and show off to people can be really compelling.

Because of the relatively small form factor of CDs, they’re also pretty easy to store, so you can accumulate a fair number of CDs without taking up too much space. They’re easy to display, easy to move around, and look great on a dedicated shelf in one’s home.

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That’s actually false. MP3 are able to be set to incredible sampling rates nowadays. It’s still “lossy”, but they actually out compete vinyls. While it’s true that vinyls are technically higher resolution, defect in fabrication makes its more inacurate than a good old mp3

Secondly, cds aren’t analog either. It’s still digitized, and can offer the same amout of quality as a mp3.

Although this assumes the file wasn’t passed through a bad encoder.

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As a physical media fanatic, I love CD’s but they’re not always perfect.

There are plenty of trash CD releases out there (they also exist on cassette and vinyl tbh) that sound awful, I do my part to write little reviews on CB about these.

The biggest part of buying CDs for me is that I have an unrevokable backup of the music I like, I doubt Universal or Sony are going to come and kick my door down to take back a CD they don’t want in their catalogue anymore. Of course there are always concerns about disc rot, and over the next few decades I think we’ll start to see how much this may affect CDs which were often touted as being good forever. We kind of know that shellac and vinyl can easily last 100 years for the former and 50 for the latter when stored properly, and even tape does pretty well.

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I’ve switched from vinyl to CD because, as a child, I was anxious of degrading my LP each time I played them, so I always recorded compilations on cassette tapes.
Then when my parents could afford a CD player, I was so relieved.

Since then I haven’t had the need to switch formats, again.
It’s still great, and now not expensive.

But it’s true, now that I’ve aged, I regret the large LP packaging, more readable.

Yes, I agree!

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The main reason I still buy CDs is that they have become cheap as dirt, especially when bought second-hand. Once in a while I venture on a crate-digging mission and I haven’t been disappointed yet; There are quite some interesting albums to be found for those who look.

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TL;DR… (skimmed the titles, speed read text, been long day… )

I pick up CDs from EBay. An expensive side effect of spending too much time on MusicBrainz is finding too many ideas to go pick up on EBay. :laughing:

CD then ripped to FLAC, booklets scanned, all popped onto my KODI Media Server.

Like @sound.and.vision I like the fact that my CD on my shelf will always be there. And no one is changing the track list on that CD. It is one of the main reasons I avoid the streaming shops. I don’t want to wake up one day and find my favourite album has been “Updated”.

Has anyone mentioned the booklets actually have REAL credits in them? Streaming does not seem to care as to who wrote or produced the music.

Can’t do MP3 as my speakers are beyond that sonic range. I spent a year ripping all my CDs to MP3… and then improved the hifi. Can certainly hear how much better a CD is than MP3 320kbps… so deleted the MP3s and swapped to FLAC.

I always test new hifi kit with Dark Side of the Moon. I know it so well. Popping the MP3s on that day I bought my first hifi was upsetting… then I put on the CD. And faith restored.

I love the fact so many people have dumped their CDs on EBay. So many treasures to find.

I am also always a “Listen to the album” person. So much so that sometimes I don’t actually know the name of a track, I just know it as part of an album. Even on my phone I never do “Track Shuffle”, instead I’ll do “Album Shuffle”.

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I recently ripped my modest CD collection (~500 discs collected in the last 20 years or so, some of them older than that), and I did get some bad ones.

One of them was “Dreamt About Dreaming” by Lull - typical victim of early 1990s PDO disc bronzing. I guess I was lucky anyway: I got it as late as 2010, and it was still perfectly fine (although there were some signs of bronzing near the edges). In 2022 the two final tracks are corrupted. “Brook” by Lull & Origami Arktika exhibits the same disc rot behavior in the last track, but without any discoloration of the medium.

Another problematic one was “Devil’s Brothers” by Chaos as Shelter. This one was sad, because it was a limited, pretty much DIY release on a small underground Polish label in 2000. But it was a CDr - they are expected to go bad over time. Fortunately I was able to get another copy! And it’s recorded on a different kind of CDr medium (blue, the previous one is silvery-green) - and the blue one plays and rips with no issues at all.

The most irritating thing of all are the “Copy controlled” CDs. The way the copy protection is achieved makes these discs much more sensitive to normal wear. I think I have 4 of them, and all of them have problems. One is “Hail to the Thief” by Radiohead, so I can replace it easily. The others are “Grit” and “The Deep End” by Madrugada. I was able to rip and repair “Grit” with CueTools, but I had to replace “The Deep End” (it was a limited edition, so it was even more irritating - but I managed to get the same limited edition on a regular CD). The most disappointing one is “Silent Treatment” by Pati Yang. The disc is unreadable, and (to my knowledge) there never was a release on a regular CD. So I guess I’m simply out of luck with this one. :frowning:

The most interesting one is the “Ready” EP by Madrugada. I have no idea what happened - see for yourself:


This is actually inside the disc - it’s smooth to the touch. Maybe some chemical reaction in the medium? Interestingly, since this is just a 4-track EP it did not reach the data area, and the CD still plays well. I guess it’s just a matter of time, though. I’ll be monitoring the progress. It’s also oddly aesthetic. But I would really appreciate if it was aesthetic somewhere else. :wink:

Some time ago talked with a friend of mine and I was telling him about the latest Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds album - that I had low expectations, that it actually blew my mind, that I only listened to it a few times and I don’t fully “get it” yet. I must’ve been pretty enthusiastic, because his reaction was: “I think I need to get off Spotify to enjoy an album this way again”. :wink:

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