Last CD. Is the CD dead?

[PuzZLeR]

It saddens me.

I've recently bought a CD. Someone told me in my teenage years, "this is the best song you will ever hear".

And I bought the CD sevaral year later - this week. And I heard the song on a special birthday just a few days ago. And it IS the best song I will ever hear. True.

Now I've declared this the Last CD I will ever buy. Am I doing the right thing? Is the CD really dead? After 700 CDs I would love to hear this Forum's opinions on this. A particular one person told me that buying CDs is "officially old-school". And I did notice that "buying a CD" these days is a rare and expensive thing nowadays. She was asking, "You're still buying these old things?"

Is it true?

I've called upon this Forum to enlighten me - yay or nay.

Thanks for reading.
Geordie.

[bendixG15]

Buy and enjoy what the hell you want and screw them. It's your life to enjoy.

[redwudz]

I still have a 5+ year old stack of blank CDs. I use them occasionally for program backups. If I run out, I will probably look for a few more.
My car has a unused CD player. I use the USB port and a thumb drive instead to play my MP3 music, along with a Sirius XM radio.

I have gotten rid of and converted all my music cassettes. Try to find one of those players these days.

[KarMa]

Quite fittingly, the first CD made in the United States for commercial release was Bruce Springsteen's 1984 album, "Born in the U.S.A." But it wasn't the first commercially available CD ever. That title belongs to Billy Joel's "52nd Street," which was released on CD in Japan in 1982. http://www.livescience.com/33323-first-cd-made-in-usa.html#sthash.vp6D6oEE.dpuf

Yeah CD is old school. When was the last time you saw a CD Walkman. 700MB of pure uncompressed WAV, hot dog, who needs FLAC. Bear in mind that I have recently become a bit of a Compact Cassette groupie, buying a very nice "Realistic" (Radioshack) cassette deck along with boxes of disused tapes. And doing lots of recording on to tape. So I'm in no position to judge.

I have gotten rid of and converted all my music cassettes. Try to find one of those players these days.

I got very lucky at an auction, payed something like a dollar the Realistic player. Everyone wanted the turn table.

[theewizard]

we still buy an occasional CD or GIft set
i have never bought an MP3 download
i converted all the CDs to mp3 for the wife to play on her tablet
even bought her some concert and TV show dvds and ripped and converted them
her tablet is her media player for ALL forms
IF you enjoy CDs keep buying the ones you like

[cornemuse]

Yeah, well, remember vinyl was gonna be dead after cd's were introduced. Right. You can spend a lot of $$ on good turntables still. I have 2 belt drives & a direct drive tt. For me, records sound different, better? I dont know, , , Thrift stores are full of lp's in pretty decent shape, if one likes the 'older' music.

-c-

[PuzZLeR]

Thanks for the feedback!

I truly did enjoy buying CDs over the years - I love my music! And I too never did this "buy a digital song" thing, let alone pirate anything, and anything DRM is just lame to me. I just simply love the feel of a new CD in my hands, and opening it, and playing it for the first, and then for the 757th time... It's not the same with a download. Just like there's a special appeal over renting movies at a store that you don't get from the 'Net. (Another sad thing.)

I did rip everything to FLAC/MP3/AAC, even some movies to DivX/H.264, (all for personal reasons, not "file sharing") but, again, nothing like the real physical thing for me. I still play the CD much more.

However, buying a CD is getting harder and harder these days, did you notice? And it seems like anything over a couple of years old is out of print now, and only available for $50+ or something. Perhaps an exaggeration, but buying my latest batch of CDs would have been much easier, quicker, and cheaper like 10 years ago.

And even some latest laptops have dropped an optical drive like computers dropped the floppies years ago.

It does seem inevitable that I will have to accept, or embrace, a "new format", and I'm thinking it's best to do it sooner than later. Rip off the band-aid finally.

Yes, vinyl has made a "Comeback with a Vengeance", and there's more companies right now making turntables over CD players. Ironic. Should this be the "new format"? After all, it's the "true" sound in many ways, and what's special about it is that you can never get a 1:1 copy in digital of it either. Vinyl truly is unique, traditional, and in its own vector space.

(Then again, I did enjoy digitizing my VHS tapes and any audio cassettes. But that's different.)

Thanks for reading. Hoping for more feedback on this.

[SameSelf]

CD may be old school, but the only alternative consumer technology that is a step up from CD, is high resolution downloads. But good luck finding an album in which you are interested available in high resolution. In fact, most high resolution downloads are masquerading as 16/44.1. It is funny how consumers have gotten stupider over the years thinking LPs are an improvement. I prefer CDs over 16/44.1 downloads as they are free from DRM, plus many artists include a free DVD or bonus CD with the CD. You don't get that with an LP. Of course I lose the benefit of the velvet feel of the album cover. Whatever, just don't sound like an idiot and try to argue that LPs are sonically superior. They aren't. And don't get me started about ripping CDs to put on your phone or tablet. Ripping is much easier than capturing an album to digital.

[KarMa]

LPs can output a much higher frequency range of over 50khz than the 22khz limit of CDs. Though the number of people who can hear much above 22khz is probably limited to the very young, so this advantage is not as huge in the real music listening world. And then there is always the scratches, and skips on LPs.

[SameSelf]

You ever listen to frequencies at the 20 kHz level? It is not pleasant. Plus the bass rolloff on an LP is pretty severe so the needle doesn't jump out of the groove. CDs don't suffer from this problem and bass is far more important than sibilance.