vinyl revival

[Cletus]

You bring up another point that has an impact on sales: attrition. There are some albums I've bought numerous times, such as Robin Trower's "Bridge of Sighs", simply because they got worn out. Don't have to do that with CDs. Buy it once, and barring unforeseen circumstances, you've got it forever. Especially if you do what I do and just rip it to your computer, then put the disk away. The copy sounds exactly like the original, and still does even if you play it 73 bajillion times. As a result, sales go down.

So you've never noticed the gradual drop in quality of MP3s over time? aha. Well, if it makes you happy Cagey.

 

[Cagey]

You're kidding, right?

 

[AutoBat]

I've sold most of my CDs, nearly everything I have now (barring my DJ vinyls) is on my computer (wait, those are on here too)
My phone plays mp3s, my car plays mp3 cds. I don't see a reason not to have 7 hours vs 84 minutes on a disc.

Skipping bad songs or skits or whatever is the pinnacle of music selection.  Now I get to listen to the songs I want to hear!
I had Iron Butterfly's Inna-Gadda Da Vita on 8track.  That beast was all of track 1 & half of track 2.  With no fast forward, or reverse that was a bugger to hear, as frankly, I never cared for the rest of the album.

 

[ramonet]

Everything sounds better in vinyl!!! I have around 3000 and choose just 10 it's... impossible. Maybe start with Tom Petty, John Hiatt, The Kins, Rolling Stones, some old blues, The Jayhawks, Lou Reed, Hendrix, Faces... There's no end and the Top 10 changes everyday, it depends on my mood. Also the CDs are good, i have another around 3000 so... I'm an addict.

 

[Jusatele]

I've sold most of my CDs, nearly everything I have now (barring my DJ vinyls) is on my computer (wait, those are on here too)
My phone plays mp3s, my car plays mp3 cds. I don't see a reason not to have 7 hours vs 84 minutes on a disc.

Skipping bad songs or skits or whatever is the pinnacle of music selection.  Now I get to listen to the songs I want to hear!
I had Iron Butterfly's Inna-Gadda Da Vita on 8track.  That beast was all of track 1 & half of track 2.  With no fast forward, or reverse that was a bugger to hear, as frankly, I never cared for the rest of the album.

I am so glad I did not sell all my CDs when I got around to putting everything on thumb drives so I could just plug them into the stereos and play days worth of music from a drive. I Just had my last laptop crash, imagine if I had stored it all there. I use the CDs as a hard copy backup, If I lose a thumb drive I can just go to the disc, plus when I make up a catolog of sons I want to listen to I do not have to search endless drives for a song, I just pop out the disc and they are right there, burn a few disc for this event of that or do a thumb drive for it and bingo, I am off and running.
I like owning the backup. I also like the artwork and such, guess I am just old school. That is just my opinion I am not knocking yours.

 

[Cagey]

HDDs are so inexpensive these days that there's no reason to avoid doing backups, and little or no reason to fight with optical drives. You can get an external bay for maybe $25 or so, then an appropriately sized HDD for $30 to $100, and it's so fast to do backups you barely know you're doing it.

 

[Superlizard]

Another alternative (if your mobo will allow it):

- get 4 hard drives and run in RAID 10 mode

 

[Superlizard]

Typical commercial .mp3 quality (e.g. iTunes) is still sorely lacking.  I'm seeing on average 256kbps; which is crap.

It's funny because people will pay full price for an album on iTunes at 256kbps, when they could pay the same amount
for a CD which has superior quality.  Not to mention a decade ago when iTunes et al were offering 128kbps... !

I've converted the majority of my CDs to 320kbps... and if you want lossless for those killer albums, use FLAC.

 

[Cagey]

I use FLAC for everything because it's lossless and can be converted to anything. The files are bigger than MP3s, but at the price of storage these days, who cares? I have the ultimate in quality and convenience.

 

[bagman67]

Another alternative (if your mobo will allow it):

- get 4 hard drives and run in RAID 10 mode

RAID is nice, but an external backup is still a wise practice.  I've seen single drive failures in a RAID array that were followed more or less instantaneously by the whole array  going to hell.

 

[line6man]

I use FLAC for everything because it's lossless and can be converted to anything. The files are bigger than MP3s, but at the price of storage these days, who cares? I have the ultimate in quality and convenience.

It's not the price of storage I'm worried about. Usually any time I see the option to download music in FLAC format, it's stupid expensive. :sad:
Then again, if the format really is that good, I guess you get what you pay for.

 

[ByteFrenzy]

Another alternative (if your mobo will allow it):

- get 4 hard drives and run in RAID 10 mode

RAID is nice, but an external backup is still a wise practice.  I've seen single drive failures in a RAID array that were followed more or less instantaneously by the whole array  going to hell.

I've also seen RAID 5 arrays going gompletely down the toilet when a single failed drive was pulled and replaced with a spare. But if a drive failure means a risk of the array failing, a dying array controller is guaranteed to take your data to the grave with it.

 

[Cagey]

RAID is nice, but an external backup is still a wise practice.  I've seen single drive failures in a RAID array that were followed more or less instantaneously by the whole array  going to hell.

Right. Or, the power supply could go, or the controller chip, both of which are common to all drives in an array. What I've been using for the last couple years is one of these things from Thermaltake...

You can use either USB or eSATA connections, and they'll take 2.5" or 3.5" drives. They just plug in, and you're ready to go. Nothing to install, no software or drivers, etc.

Then, as mentioned, HDDs are cheap. A 1TB Seagate 7200.12, which is a very nice drive, is only $65 at Newegg. Half a terabyte is only $50, but that hardly makes sense when the other half is only $15 more.

On the machines themselves, all of mine have at least one removable bay. I like these Kingwin units...

These don't need software or anything, either. Install just like a drive. No trays. Standard SATA drive slides in like a cartridge, and automatically hooks up. At $18, they're a no-brainer.

 

[Cagey]

It's not the price of storage I'm worried about. Usually any time I see the option to download music in FLAC format, it's stupid expensive. :sad:
Then again, if the format really is that good, I guess you get what you pay for.

It really is that good, but you're right, it's expensive to get online. In that case, OGG Vorbis at high bit rates is the way to go. It's a lossy compression scheme, but it's not as bad as MP3 and it's unencumbered. There's no reason not to use FLAC when you're ripping CDs, though.