Listening habits.

Still buying vinyl, sacd and CDs.

Listen 80% vinyl, 10% silver disc and 5% tuner/streamer.

 Every month, dozens of CDs are released—many in classical, but not only. New CD player models have been coming to market over the past few years. The idea that vinyl sounds better has already been disputed. CDs sit in the middle ground between streaming and physical records.

I have often thought it would be nice to add a CD transport to my system. I traded in my beloved Linn CD12 player nearly twenty years ago when I started ripping. However, there are always other priorities for upgrading my system.

Also, the advantage of ripping is that I can also handle HDCD, SACD, DVDA and Blu-ray Audio formats. Once ripped the source is irrelevant. It’s so tidy. Add to that needle drops and downloads and the case for having a local library for FLAC and DSD files is overwhelming for me.

Then Roon came along and seamlessly integrated online albums from Qobuz. It also allowed me to go multi-room and dabble in surround music for a while.

I have enjoyed meeting the software challenges of all of this. Nevertheless, I can see that other people may prefer the simplicity of dropping a disc into the CD player. Plus there’s the appeal of physical media, although I have vinyl for that.

It’s great that we have so many choices. Yet curiously, the journey has led me back to vinyl.

Vinyl > Cassette > CD > Ripping > Downloads > Other Discs > Streaming > Vinyl 

I have been in to real to real and records since 1963, today, I still have some nice real to reels tape decks and a nice turntable, but I also listen to cassettes and DVDs and I still do some recording with my tape decks. I’m 81 years old and as Long as my hearing is good. I will never stop listening. 

Nice to be hanging out with music lovers around the globe. I am an equal opportunity format listener. I think, I prefer vinyl for older rock and jazz for the timeless experience. Putting on Meet The Beatles album reminds of buying my first record and putting on the old Wildcat fold-down all in one phonograph when I was around 7 years old. I find the quality of new vinyl a bit hit or miss and sometimes comes with skips and other strange sounds that don't clean off. Also new albums in new Zealand are NZ$60.00++ and good used ones between $30-40.00+. Whereas CD's sound consistently good over time (new or used) and cost less. I recently bought a couple Boz Scaggs CD for $5.00 each. I also enjoy streaming for exploring new music or albums I can't find online or in local shops. I find the sheer amount of music available to stream 'overwhelming' at times. I have an Technics SU-G700M2, Esoteric K03 CD player and an Auralic Aries G1.1 transport (Esoteric is the DAC with Audioquest carbon USB). Although I like the ritual of playing albums and CDs), I enjoy listening to music in all formats. To quote thefile, "I’m 62 years old and as Long as my hearing is good. I will never stop listening".