The end of an era - Best Buy will no longer sell CDs

Officially the last CD I actually bought and that was at least 10 years ago. Only place I listen to music is in the car and haven't used a CD in my car for at least 5 years, my last car didn't even HAVE a CD player and while my current one does I highly doubt it will ever get used. I have no issue with the compression on Digital Music given that cars are one of the worse places to listen to music top notch sound quality doesn't really matter.

 

So long to a good reminiscent era

 

Well it looks like the musicphiles isn't going to be happy about this... And for me personally I will agree that a CD just sound better in every way... (I can see the people bashing what I just said) hahaha!

 

It is back because it is damn expensive. When it costs 10x ~ 50x more than it did at end of its era...
Even players which are worse than back in the day cost a lot. And those really cheap ones... some can't even keep constant spinning speed.

I would happily bash you, but CD is not bad. 44kHz 16bit is quite OK. Important part of sound produced from CD is player itself. Good/Bad electronics make all the difference.
I personally have some stuff in flac, that would be storage method of choice.

But even in times of 128kbps CBR, difference between good and bad output was painfully obvious.

 

Hilarious, The Master starts a thread about no one buying CD's anymore and many of the replies confirm they still do, love it here.
Ordered two CD's yesterday, one arrived today. I buy CD's, the occasional SACD for my McIntosh MCD1100 player and some 24/96 or 24/192 high res downloads. CD's are often much cheaper than the 16/44.1 digital download, they are your's forever without the complications that can arise with digital downloads, you can lend them to someone else (I don't) and when you have a sort out of your CD collection, a charity shop benefits (I've recently donated 80 CD's).
I also rip every CD or SACD onto my lapdog so I can listen to the WAV lossless files via my lapdog using a Chord Hugo 2 dac/amp or my Questyle QP2R DAP + Focal Utopia headphones with Moon Audio Black Dragon Premium cable.
I listen to possible purchases on Spotify Free which is a fantastic set-up, I now enjoy a 100% success rate as opposed to a 50-70% success rate when buying without fully listening first. I buy more CD/SACD's than before thanks to Spotify.
I have two SD card ports in my car so WAV music is available in an efficient way there but it all comes back to owning the CD/SACD's in the first place. Yes, you can go the high-res route of Tidal at £20 per month but that doesn't suit me.
I used to have a Linn Sondek LP12 record deck but gave up vinyl years ago, too much faff, very tedious getting your albums onto digital, inconvenient generally although some blather on about the romantic aspects of vinyl. A good or great CD/SACD player sounds just as good (albeit slightly different to vinyl) nowadays and who's to say the colouration introduced by vinyl is 'correct'? And vinyl is mostly VERY EXPENSIVE!

 

I always buy CDs. Most music is not available in uncompressed format online, and I'm generally against subscription based music and game services. I want a product that I can keep, especially since services come and go. All the services also have a limited selection and exclusives. At least half of the music I listen to is only available in physical format anyway, so it makes sense for me to buy CDs that I rip and add to my extensive digital library.

 

At least HMV in the UK are still selling Vinyl, CD's are so digital!!

 

I buy CDs at concerts. Last one I bought was Jimmy Eat World - Integrity Blues and the whole band signed it. I bought the vinyl too! Going to shows and buying merch is the best way to support the bands you like.

 

Just got rid of a massive vinyl collection a few months ago. Been collecting it since before the CD era. Was taking up too much space.

Cassettes was what I used to record my vinyl and CDs to back in the day. I remember the various qualities of cassettes, ie, metal (best), chrome, ferrite, etc. Thank heavens for everything being digitalized, not necessarily for sound quality, but for doing away with the manual task of putting on a record or tape and FF or RW (or picking up the needle) to get to a favorite track.

 

I'm still on 8-track

 

Had a couple of cars back in the day (71 Firebird Trans Am and a 76 Buick Electra) that had 8-tracks. I think American cars were the only ones that offered 8-tracks in the 60s and 70s before cassettes took over.

 

I just bought a CD today actually. Only because I like it a lot and it was removed from Spotify for some reason. Will end up just ripping it anyway and storing it on my NAS.

 

I still buy CDs when i see a best off i really like or when i catch a nice chill out album, love those.

Long live CDs!!!

 

Nope, my mum had a tricked-out Mini Cooper with tinted windows, Stage 1 tuning AND an 8 track. My dad was a car enthusiast so he and I had the most fun with the Mini Cooper (he organised the car for my Mum, he had a boring Volvo estate). I inherited an expensive liking for cars, music and hi-fi from my dad.

 

In my "archives", I've got a bunch of vinyl (78s, 45s, and 33s), cassette tapes, and CDs (never got into reel-to-reel or 8 Track). I also still have the hardware to play it all too. However, while I appreciate owning the physical copy, the artwork, and all that, I find that I appreciate the portability and convenience of digital music even more. Here's what this progression has been like for me:

• 78s - it's hard to imagine what a miracle vinyl was until you've handled an old pre-vinyl 78. It's like clay - if you drop it, it will break, guaranteed. These also only had one song on them, the audio is pretty rough, and it's not portable.
• 33s/45s - better sound, more songs per disc, less prone to breakage. Not portable, and "shuffle" means you own a jukebox. You could stack them on a player, (I think one of mine only holds five), but it just plays them end-to-end, and only one side at a time.
• Cassettes - almost unbreakable (though fragile in other ways), and the first really portable music. I mean, this was a huge breakthrough at the time, especially paired with the ability to get blanks and make your own perma-shuffles (mix tapes). Seriously, this was a huge culture shift.
• CDs - similarly unbreakable, and less fragile overall (with better sound quality). Similarly portable, the ability to actually shuffle and fast forward/rewind "instantly" was huge. Blanks allowed us to continue with custom mixes.
• Digital - unbreakable, portable, high quality, instant find, fast forward, rewind, custom playlists still available, with insanely robust and miniaturized players, and artwork if you choose: in the context of this media progression, this is perfection in my opinion.
• Online - hard pass, only because I live in an area with spotty reception, and it either means: someone else is trying to play songs for me (so it's a form of radio) or it's just my music in the cloud (so why not keep it locally where signal issues aren't a thing?)

 

Funny how everyone complains about this but has not problem downloading digital copies of games from steam. I still buy a lot of my PC games on disc. Last time I was in the U.S. downloading seemed like the only option too. So I'm assuming you guys aren't buying games on disc.