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this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2026
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Music
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Having grown up with cassette tapes and CDs later on, I just want digital.
Yes, it is nice to hold a physical thing, but it's also nice to just play any song on your phone that you have on you 24/7 anyway.
Owning more things really doesn't sound appealing to me personally. Also, CDs were never very portable, they scratch and these little tabs on their plastic cases break.
Sorry for sounding so negative, I'm glad they are having fun with their music. I just think the current CD trend could be 2nd hand nostalgia for today's teens and young adults who just didn't learn to loathe them yet 😅
Nah. Give me both. Thats why a CD is the best. You get physical, and it can be ripped. I prefer records but the expense is too high for a lot of them now.
CDs never got old man. Still the best.
New computers don't even have a cd though, and every single cd and dvd player outside of laptops and game systems is defective garbage.
Think what you want. All my computers have disc drives. If they dont, I have external ones.
I am still using disc drives from the 90s with zero issues. I actually take care of my shit unlike most people so maybe thats why. One of my DVD players sat in a storage shed getting covered in dust for like 8 ish years (not climate controlled either), had stuff dropped on it, still works fine. Thats a heavy metal body onkyo though with component out. Any DVD player with HDMI only out is pretty much shit and cheaply made.
VCRs are even better. Ive rarely found one I can't get working with minimal effort.
I mean maybe in standalone devices but you certainly aren't using a drive on your PC from the 90s without a whole lot of work for a slow shitty jury rig job.
Managing switching a PATA connection to SATA is a pain imho.
Sorry, those old drives I was referring to are just CD players of various types. The ones in my PCs are like 15 years old.
I've had an external dvd player for years now and never had an issue. Maybe because i only use it once a month or so ? But it does not seem like defective garbage, and at the time i picked the cheapest one i could find.
They have few parts. Motor , laser, laser carriage. And a controller. Not a lot to break.
What? CDs were highly portable, only scratch when mishandled, and "disc wallets" were a widely used thing.
I was talking about those bulky discmans.
I live in Germany and I don't even own a car. In your own 4 wheels, I am sure CDs are plenty portable.
I was there 3000 years ago
when the ancient music was written
Still have one in my car.
Clearly the driver here is to own your stuff, not excitement of carrying 100 CDs around with you
We need more clarity for what digital ownership is or isn't with laws to back it up.
I'd guess audio CDs are a tie in to games on physical media which is an obvious hot topic today. Corporations don't want you owning anything, and it gets a lot easier when you don't have something you can hold in your hand!
I am of a similar vintage, but I never gave up my CDs. For a while there, I did just go digital because of the convenience and depth. Then Covid came along and I got into records. That tapered off in the last couple of years and I've been buying CDs again because they take less room.
I still mostly listen to my music digitally, but now I'm hosting my own server and keeping a curated collection.
Self-hosting makes a ton of sense.
I do like the variety that comes with streaming. Getting notified about new releases from your favorite artists and then just being able to listen to them right away is a joy.
But one day, when my music streaming service will invariably get enshittified, I will self-host, too :)
There's a whole stack of self hosting services that allow you to do exactly this. The *arr stack.
Mine automatically grabs the new releases, downloads them to my plex server and I can stream anywhere with Plexamp anytime I want.
To be fair I bought a lifetime Plex Pass back when they were $45.
Pure digital these days means streaming. Rightholders don’t want to give you a file you can copy or store indefinitely, they want you to rent
You can still buy DRM-free music you can download and keep. And not just from places like Bandcamp; Apple hasn't stopped selling music, and Qobuz even has FLAC downloads.
Yeah, despite nobody seeming to know (or remember) it, the DRM-free music ecosystem is still surprisingly robust. Even Amazon still sells MP3s, even though they seem to hide it and try to get you to stream instead.
It's a shame thid kind of thing never took off for TV or movies.
Which means they don't understand how files work and spend a lot off wasted effort on DRM. They give us a file whether they intend to or not.
Physical you can make digital, and stream it, put it on your phone. I have many cars, that doesn't mean I pack them with me. I make them digital and then stream them to my own devices.
Its the exact same thing, just I don't have a subscription that could end or a corporation license that expires. Unless you buy your music DRM free, I can respect that.
Yeah I used to do all that stuff. Get a CD, stick it in computer, rip contents to files. Make sure files and directories are in good order and named properly.
Now don't forget to copy what you want to some storage device that you need to take with you. I guess you could dump the files on your phone, but you could also use a streaming service. Same output, a lot fewer steps.
Did all this ages ago, I have no need to do it again. I'm OK to pay for a service that does it for me.
I mean, I use jellyfin and stream it to my devices for free. I pay $10 once for the CD, and then I have the same convenience but no monthly fees.
Records produce better music quality, don't break as readily, and don't scratch as such. Tapes were better than CD's really.
I'm sorry, are you trolling? As a realistic audiophile, vinyl isnt technologically better. Is it way cooler and more fun? Yes. Is stuff usually mastered better for it? Again yes. I have several albums of the CD and the record and all of them the record is better because the CD is fucking brick walled to hell.
Also records dont scratch? Lol microscopic dust blowing around from a slight draft scratches them. The needle destroys them actively while playing it.
Cassettes are "neat" but they sound like rubber cat shit. Theyre tough as nails though.
If you mean reel to reel tape, youre correct. Nothing I've ever heard really sounds better than rtr tape. But its so old now its nearly impossible to get.
I have records older than I am that still play, no cd's as such, they scratch a lot easier.
And yes, the sound is better on those old recordings. Neil Young actually made an mp3 years back that plays the full range of music as opposed to the partial we now hear, if you care to look into that. It's too expensive for me last I checked.
Yes I know all about Neils projects, and I read his autobiography last year. Its delusional and he clearly has no concept of mp3 bitrate. I'm all for alternate platforms but his is a scam, sorry.
Now I doubt this is the case but if you are talking about "old records just sounded better and then I got a new CD of the doobie brothers and it sounded horrible!" Thats probably a true fact for many reasons.
First, any music recorded on tape (1940s to 1990s) is going to be much better represented on an original vinyl pressing. Because those master tapes had the hell beat out of them for decades and then when CD came along those master tapes were tired out and shot. Not to mention, when CD first came out DACs were shit. That makes a big difference. A 1 cent Chinese DAC today is 100000x better than a 400 dollar DAC from 1985.
A fun side note for all the "anaL0G is beTTER!!11" stupid crowd, Night Shift by the commodores was recorded on a digital Mitsubishi tape machine and is one of the best sounding albums of all time. So, yeah.
I'll agree that a 300k reel to reel setup sounds better than someone's airpods. Thats obvious. But an average persons turntable vs HQ digital? No chance. some records will sound better due to the mastering as previously stated. But on the whole its a dumb argument.
If youre talking about low bitrate mp3s, yep those sound like shit. But no one has been listening to those since 2010 YouTube rips at 240p stopped being a thing. Streaming is mostly CD quality 44.1 or higher. The whole "you lose 70% of the sound because the file is smaller!!" Is an idiotic take with zero comprehension of file compression techniques.
I'm sick of people spreading these lies and it makes educated experienced audiophiles look stupid.
Lastly, anyone espouting that they can hear the difference between flac and a 320kbps mp3 probably hasn't even been to an audiologist to get their hearing checked. Or doesn't have a properly measured calibrated room and setup.
*also I'm not raging at you in particular, mostly just that these lies have not been debunked in 2026 when we have the knowledge and tools to know better.
Well said