[Headphones and Coffee]

From vinyl records to CD and the resurgence of Cassette.
My personal opinion is physical media just enhances the experience, I love opening the CD, DVD, or Record case and placing it in its player. I do have a large library of MP3, FLAC, DSD files, they have their place especially traveling for convenience.

 

[SteveM324]

I still buy new and used records and when I want to impress my audiophile friends, I always play records. I have a decent collection of records and they're all either mint (several still unplayed) or mint minus. I have a ritual of cleaning my records in my ultrasonic cleaning tank, spin clean rinse and final rinse on my VPI 16.5. The ultrasonic cleaner is a game changer for vinyl lovers. Of course I like digital too, especially Qobuz for finding new and interesting music. I also have about 2.5TB of music on my hard drive. I rarely play any of my CDs anymore. I haven't played a CD in 2020. Here are pics of my vinyl collection and my LP cleaning station.

 

[Rodmunch]

If I like an album enough from hearing it streamed then I'll absolutely buy the CD.

 

[SteveM324]

If I like an album enough from hearing it streamed then I'll absolutely buy the CD.

I’ll do the same, only I buy the LP.

 

[alpha421]

I occasionally find a SACD gem at my local Half Price Books from time to time.

 

[whirlwind]

I still buy cd's...then I rip them to flac

 

[smallcaps]

I love CDs and had a decent collection, but I move a lot for work and it was simply not practical to own them, so I ripped everything to FLAC instead and sold them. Much like my wife's book collection is now mostly on her Kindle, I carry around a hard drive with several backups (1 at the office, 1 at home, 1 in the cloud) of my music now.

I do miss album art and the way I consume music has also greatly changed from when I owned CDs. I listen less to albums now and more so to custom playlists.

 

[Malevolent]

A lot of the music I love (EDM) just cannot be found online (as digital downloads). I'm happy to pay good money for what I want; however, there are no stores that sell them!

Hence, I've been buying (lots of) CDs from places like Discogs. I'll rip the tracks I need or want, then the CDs are stowed away.

 

[SteveM324]

I used to check out CDs at my public library and rip them to FLAC but I haven’t done that in years since I started streaming Tidal and now Qobuz. I enjoy playing records for their sound quality.

 

[diggygun]

My prime music collection is still Vinyl, second is CD. I presently have no Digital music. However, I have recently purchased a very cheap Bluetooth Adapter to use with Amazon Prime to check out albums before getting them on Vinyl.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

I like media. I would not buy a digital download unless I couldn't easily find the CD. I think I bought 3 album downloads in the last few years. Usually I wait until I can find a sealed copy of the CD and then rip it. I have CDs, vinyl albums, and minidiscs. Record albums are great, you can get some very collectible items and some have nice fold outs, songbooks etc.

 

[SteveM324]

For me, streaming has taken the risk out of buying physical media. If I really like an album‘s content streamed but I’m not satisfied with the stream SQ, then I’ll buy the LP.