The compact disc was such big deal when they came into the market back in the ’80s. The promise of better sound that wouldn’t degrade with use was pretty novel back then. As long as you took care of your CDs, they would deliver the same sound as they did when you purchased them. And for a couple of decades, CDs were the dominant format that surpassed cassettes tapes in terms of portability, ease of use, and good sound quality. Vinyl was almost extinct as pressing labs went under and it seemed no one was bothering with that dead format anymore.
But vinyl didn’t die.
It’s now a very popular format that has its fans that span across age groups. It’s more expensive to buy vinyl records, and part of that is that the records are heavier and the number of production houses is still small, so labels can market these records as somehow having a superior sound to CDs. However, as I found out from one of the clerks at Rasputin Records who is studying to be a recording engineer, the digital files used to cut the vinyl records is not the so-called Hi Res files, but the same sample rate as CDs (i.e., 16-bit, 44.1 KHz). So, when labels say the sound quality of the vinyl is superior, maybe they are comparing it to some of the LPs produced in the ’70s and ’80s that were mastered poorly. What people like about vinyl is “warmth” of the sound that creates a more pleasing listening experience. CDs can sound too shill at times, and that goes for mp3s as well. But if you have a stereo with a good equalizer and good speakers, you can decrease the amount of shrillness by playing with the sliders to get a sound that you like. The same goes for other music formats. Mp3s are a bit more difficult to make sound “warm” because there’s not that much information encoded to tweak.
All this brings me back to the CD format. Its death was predicted a few years ago, but they are still around because people buy them. When I was at Rasputin Records the other day, I noticed they had CDs for 95 cents. Yeah, 95 cents. Most of the titles come from the ’90s, but it made me laugh because I remember when those 95 cent CDs cost almost twenty bucks each. Now that vinyl is popular again, the price of records that were probably 95 cents are now averaging seven dollars in the used section. The new vinyl recordings are really expensive (around twenty-five to forty dollars). And now with Neil Young’s Pono Player coming out that plays Hi Res files, we’ll see if consumers take the Hi Res bait and start to buy their back catalog again.
Me? I still think CDs reproduce a pretty good sound, and that’s why I’ll continue to buy them. One day I may start spinning vinyl again (if I can find a place to put my turntable), but for now I’m a digital man with a collection of CDs, mp3s and, of course, streaming music through my phone.
How ’bout you? Are you satisfied with your current music playback set up?
8 thoughts on “Will CDs Ever Die?”
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Oh gosh, I remember the first time I heard of CDs. It was in Omni magazine, and I was just blown away by the idea of it. I loved my records, but my turntable and needle were crap, and I was too ignorant to fix them, so the idea of a record that you could play over and over without ruining them was gorgeous to me. I do still like CDs, and records, and the idea of listening to an entire album rather than a playlist of different artists. But of course I mostly listen to my iPod, because it’s just so darned convenient.
CDs did make mediocre to lousy sound systems sound better, and the iPod made it simple to make a large music collection portable, but I guess there are trade offs to any technology. LPs scratch and wear out, tapes break, CDs (if scratched) become pretty useless, and iPod batteries wear out making you either buy a new one or a new battery. Plus, the whole mp3 thing making the music sound thinner is a drag…
I’ll never find the “perfect musical place.” 🙂
Danny says, right now it just doesn’t seem that important.
What doesn’t seem important?
I still have all my CDs. I’ve started buying a few things on iTunes too, but I have no intention of replacing my entire collection of CDs as long as I have a device on which to play them.
Me too. Plus some CD titles aren’t available in Hi Res digital formats, or Low Res like mp3…so hanging on to your CD collection makes sense.
CDs are a fantastic way of getting DRM free music onto the device of your choice. That’s something that vinyl will have a hard time replicating. Which, honestly, is part of the appeal of vinyl- for both musicians and music lovers.
Something I’ve given a lot of thought about over the past several years:
As more and more experiences become digitizable, we can cut down on the “clutter” of what I might think of as disposable entertainment.
For instance, take a book that you might haul to a beach, read once and never think about again. Do you really want that in your house _for the rest of your life_? Probably not. On the one hand, that’s why used book stores have been around forever. On the other hand, a lot of serious bibliophiles blanch at the thought of getting rid of any book. With the E-book reader, this problem kind of goes away. I can enjoy the DaVinci code (seriously: it’s fun mindless reading), while not having to see it taking up space in my house. I can consume it, enjoy it, and forget about it. Perfect McDonalds reading.
This, though, presents a problem. Most people arrange their homes in a way that shows off their tastes. The very first thing I do when I walk into someone’s home is snoop their bookshelves. For other people, it might be their music collection. Seeing the physical artifacts that surround a person’s home tell you so very much about that person’s personality. Most of us are aware of this, and arrange our homes in such a way that it creates whatever impression we want people to have. This might only be an unconscious tic, but when we are expecting guests that we want to impress, we clean and organize with this thought in the back of our heads.
Except… now books, music, games, etc are digitized. It’s difficult to show off what’s important to us! And few of us are so vain that we’ll buy a paperback copy of War and Peace just to have bragging rights. Instead, we go looking for “special editions”. Illustrated books, Coffee table books, extended editions of games. entire seasons of a favorite TV show, etc. The things that are important to us as physical artifacts will find expression, even as we have ever more disposable digital artifacts.
Hence the growth of vinyl record sales. It shows off my tastes to the world, and I can tell myself that it’s “better sound”. The fact that it’s a format with a physically larger footprint, and thus bigger, more eye-catching artwork is something not all of us will think about as we buy it.
But that last bit? That might be the most important part.
People who like to collect stuff that they can display is very much part of the growth in vinyl sales. Plus, with many LPs, the artwork is quite “displayable” so it makes for relatively cheap (but interesting) images to nail to your walls.