Compact Disc and Vinyl Habits


     Hello.  I was wondering what medium people use and prefer for their music collections.  Also how large is your collection?  Members may want to comment on genres preferred and where they purchase their music.  I’m a big compact disc collector and fan.  I grew up with vinyl and am getting back into vinyl as a collector and for the luxury of that analog sound. Vinyl is also nostalgic as my youth was spent listening to vinyl and even reel to reel and I did a lot of recording from vinyl to reel to reel and cassette. Compact Discs are so much more practical with me.  I can throw a disc on in the car and load up my cd changer at home for a long round of listening.  They stay clean, don’t crack and pop, last a lifetime and are much easier to store.  With a decent sound system they sound good.  I see the value in both vinyl and cds.  Vinyl is like a fine wine.  Again I’m going to be investing in a vinyl system in the future.  Music is very important to me as it is healing.
      My collection is at about 1200 cds currently.  It was a lot larger yet unfortunately someone stole most of them.  I’m working on replacing the titles stolen and my collection constantly grows.  I buy about 20 cds+/- monthly.  Sometimes more as I’m again replacing a lot of stolen cds.  My collection is primarily progressive rock.  Classic rock and jazz fusion also occupy a place in my heart.  Cds are primarily bought from an online vendor called “The Lasers Edge.”  A lot of the titles being replaced are hard to find as mainstream is not listened to at all.  I listen to music at home on headphones as I live in a condo. The openness of speakers and the large sound stage etc is missed.  
     I’m not a big streamer as I like to see and feel the medium.  The artwork and lyrics are also important. I like to have the artwork on hand rather than look up the artwork and lyrics online.  There’s also the point of supporting artists. Progressive rock hasn’t been in the mainstream since the very late 60’s and early 70’s with bands such as King Crimson, Yes, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Renaissance, ELP, Jethro Tull, Van Der Graaf Generator, Camel, PFM, Banco, Le Orme, Atomic Rooster, Eloy, Caravan, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Uriah Heep, Rush, Morse Code, Ange, etcetera etcetera. I grew up with these bands and progressive rock has continued with a large dry spell in the 80’s, though it’s nowhere near as popular as its heyday.  It’s important to support artists so they can keep producing music.  
     Nothing comes close when it comes to rock music in general, in my humble opinion to the plethora of quality and exciting music the heyday of rock produced from the mid 60’s to the mid 70’s.  Even so there is a lot of exciting quality music to be unearthed and discovered in the years following the heyday up until now.  I’m primarily speaking of the music I like encompassing the many sub-genres of progressive rock.  My collection has just as many artists from more recent times as the heyday and this balance is shifting towards more recent prog as more is released.  The cds that are being replaced from the heyday does balance this out too.  There’s a lot of classic rock to be replaced yet as I prefer progressive rock and am replacing this first.  I didn’t mention names of more recent progressive rock groups.  There’s plenty out there including new and interesting sub-genres.  Maybe another time.

       Vinyl is missed in the case of the artwork.  Limited and special edition versions of cds are put first as are mini lp and hardbound book editions.  Music is an art form in many shades.  Box sets are also sought after.  I had a large amount of box sets go missing and this is the hardest form to find new and replace.

     Just throwing some questions and thoughts out to anyone who would like to comment. Hope your Christmas/Holiday was full of family, friends and good memories.  Happy New Year.  Stay healthy friends.
      

 

 

paulg1966

Well,  I have probably near 3K vinyl, 2.5K cd's, adding to vinyl all the time as gifts. People all too willing to give me their albums, just clutter to them and don't want the hassle of selling.

 

But thern I stream probably 90% of the time, streaming setup far more optimized than analog, although I have vinyl side upgrades coming in near future. So for sound quality, streams dominate, and then there is the advantage of far more choices in music, and on the fly playlists, I love mixing up genres. Don't even play cd's anymore, once my Mark Levinson #37 gave up the ghost couldn't find equivalent transport so started cd rips. All my cd's converted to rips.

 

Anyway, I do love the vinyl format, rather like pieces of art, so many memories allied to this physical media. I too have lots  of prog rock from 70's, both on vinyl and cd rips, all the bands you mentioned. But then I have music from nearly all genres and eras on vinyl and cd.

 

Not sure if you're aware, but modern jam bands are the new prog rock. Bands like Moe, Umphrees McGee, Perpetual Groove, The String Cheese Incident, The Disco Biscuits to name but a few.

Grow up with lp's and bought last big bundle of them in '96. Still got most of them, but my musical taste has changed since than (cant listen rock,hard, prog rock or any kind of rock any more, except perhaps in a car) but still cant force myself to sell those records.

Do not stream, still buy lots of jazz cd's, always had quite a decent player but if I could afford it, would prefer to have all analog rig. It is not the price of equipment that scares me, but the price of records (you need two of each and if I wanted all my collection on lp's instead on cd's that would cost me way more than 100k, if counting current record prices of 20 to 40 eur for a new piece)

 

I grew up listening to vinyl but switched over to CDs in 1987 when I purchased my first CD player.  My CD and SACD collection is now somewhere between 2 - 2.5k. I sold my remaining vinyl albums decades ago. The quality of vinyl LPs got so bad in the early 80s that I was returning 50% of my purchases due to warpage and “snap”, “crackle” and “pop”.  I have no desire to relive that frustration not to mention the boutique prices one has to pay these days for vinyl.  CDs are relatively cheap and they can be purchased used risk free.  I enjoy streaming to discover new music but I always buy it on CD when possible if it’s a title I like. I like having a physical medium and CDs sound better than streaming on my system.  I have both my Audiolab CDT 6000 transport and Bluesound Node 2i feeding my Denafrips Pontus II DAC and CDs win hands down to my ears.

The medium I use most for collecting is SSD.

edcyn should've grabbed it while the getting was good.

There's something to be said about forking money over to purchase media and to store it on a bookshelf or burn it onto a CD, hard drive, SD Card, etc. This was brought home to me when Qobuz simply decided to discontinue streaming one of my "favorites," an album that is still happily displayed on my Qobuz home page.

@paulg1966 

Wow! Le Orme... I have two of their releases on Italian LPs, bought back in the day, before CDs existed. Still in my collection. Haven't played them in years but, hey, you might have convinced me to spin a side or two. And still some of the best album jackets ever.

We seem to have some things in common.  I also have to have the physical media in my hand.  I still have about 700 LPs from back in the day.  All stored in a closet somewhere.  'The Day", is the time before a day in the early 1980's when I saw and heard a Sony representative  at the military PX in   Fürth, Germany putting a CD player through it's paces.  Just imagine controlling a disc player with a remote!!  I remember saying very quietly, "thank you Jesus".  I lived to see it!!   During this same time a company was making noises about a turntable that could read the LP with a laser instead of a Cartridge .  I think 'BIC' was the company.  I was all excited about that possibility, when the CD was introduced.  As they say, the rest is history.

I had no idea everything would be released all over again on CD.  So I had decided to buy all future purchases of Classical on CD and Jazz on LP.  That soon changed.  So I bought up all the classical CDs at the PX ($5 each), until I could  afford a CD player.  The first ones cost around 900 dollars, if memory serves.

Purchased my last LP in El Paso, Texas at Sound Warehouse.  Arthur Blythe's 'Elaborations".   Closing in on 4000 CDs now.  Most from the BMG record club, Waterloo Records and Tower Records  in Austin, Texas and later Amazon.

 

I find the vinyl movement sort of amusing.  They seem determined to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.   A very expensive proposition.

 

Cheers

I have most of my LPs from the 60s and 70s but when the CD came out I converted over. I rebought just about everything I had on vinyl. I liked the uninterrupted and quiet playback.