I do as well as Japanese apparently. Interesting read. https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/04/25/why-do-the-japanese-love-cds?utm_medium=social-media.content.np&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=editorial-social&utm_content=discovery.content&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0nG2sAi-1gooHVrSlyt9b9881LXZENkwEUUV8X2lv0d04h_Mz2dv_BSCE_aem_ZmFrZWR1bW15MTZieXRlcw
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I havenât been purchasing CDâs for many years now. I have averaged less than one disc per year over the past 7 years. Those discs were immediately copied to the drive where I store my music.
With my current Vivaldi set-up I donât even have the capability for playing discs. When I made my purchase I decided to pass on the transport since I had never used the one in my Rossini player nor in the Meridian 808 I owned before that.
Streaming and playing files from my library are just too convenient. I have made the decision that âIfâ there are any SQ benefits of discs over streaming they are offset by the clutter of keeping discs.
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I do too. Maybe too many. I like the tangible media and it gives me organization that is more difficult electronically. Short term listening is stream with cd and vinyl broken down probably 70/30 respectively with a definite sq preference for vinyl
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Me too. From experiences playing with streaming software at the local dCS dealer I still have the impression that Qobuz et al. have enormously broad catalogues (fantastic for sampling different things) but sometimes not very deep. But perhaps there are serious long term collectors of vinyl whoâd say the same about CDs.
The big turn-off of streaming is the playing around with a tablet or phone to select music. I sit in front of a computer all day as it is. I donât want more of the same in my music-listening life. So I continue to collect CDs and SACDs⌠but I do rip all the discs I own, as a hedge against possible future change.
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Just sharing my approach with the group:
Many CDs are now available on-line at higher resolution than 44.1 so Iâve stopped buying the physical media and simply add those to my library via Qobuz.
I occasionally purchase older jazz SACDs and rip them via the known Blu Ray player hack. To me this makes a lot of sense because you can buy an SACD of an actual recording of, for example, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, etc.
In classical musicâunlike with jazzâyou cannot, alas, buy an actual recording of Mozart playing Mozart, and so I have the belief that all of the great classical pieces will eventually be re-recorded at 192kHz or DSD256. For this reason, except for truly special SACDs, e.g., Heifetz, I mostly download these from NativeDSD.
Like @still-one, my position is that if there is still a SQ benefit of physical medium over digital, this is outweighed by the cost (transport + cabling), convenience and storage benefits.
Cheers,
R
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I do buy them, I like to browse recordstores (also secondhand) for nice finds and scour discogs every so often for SACDs.
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I continue to buy cd especially in japan where you can find shm cd that are remarkable.
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Continuing the discussion from Who buys cds these days?:
I really try not toâŚbut am never successful. I love physical music. When I was very young I listened to only Vinyl, because that was all there was. Something attractive about the CD when it premiered, and later the SACD that just pulled me in. I have Tidal and Qobuz, but i just love listening to a cd and reading the liner notes,using that huge Dcs remote to change the Rossini transport skip songs etc. âAnd I have been addicted to DISCOGS for years, and enjoy getting a copy of a cd that Iâve searched for and even longed for in some cases is strangely akin to searching for audio gear. At my age I cannot discern between the physical media and the stream, but love searching my racks and picking a few to sit down and listen to. I do rip all mine and keep it all bookmarked in Roon, but 95% of my listening is with CDsâsince 1982.
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Remember that Qobuz provides the CD booklet in many cases and/or also often has its own text. Unfortunately these cannot be accessed via Mosaic. You need to install a Qobuz desktop player on your PC. You wonât play music from this but as well as being able to read the various text items available need it to configure your account.
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I bought a CD transport last year thinking it would be easier to play some of the old CD box sets I have yet to rip. I found myself using Qobuz to stream the same material rather than fiddling with the CDs. I wound up selling the transport on. Ripped and streamed material sounded a bit better than the CDs anyway. Probably because of the Rossini clock
One really needs a CD transport with a word clock input to get the most out of CDs with a dCS DAC
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I sold all my CDs 10 years ago and since I never bought even one.
Streaming is so superior in every wayâŚIn particular when you can stream with dCS gearâŚ
Try it with a Rossini or Vivaldi CD/SACD transport with appropriate system clock. You may change your mind. Thatâs not to say that local or service streaming isnât wonderful in its own right. It is now my main music source.
One thing that is important in the overall scheme of things is that for many the whole idea of UPnP streaming is technically beyond their reach, In fact they are basically frightened of the complexity ( to them). So CD ( and vinyl) provide a significant income for the record industry ( 4.6% or around $1.2 billion). Still worth having.
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Connecting a streaming platform like Tidal or Qobuz doesnât require any skill. One can stream music from these commercial platform without the need of having a NAS running an UPnP music serverâŚBut if some people still enjoy playing CDs, I wonât advise anyone to stop doing that.
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Itâs not that that concerns them. It is the UPnP area that scares them. Downloading and ripping seem to lie outside of what they will countenance. Itâs just too complex and needs too much technical skill as far as they are concerned.
It is true that downloading from NativeDSD takes a little bit of gymnastics since you need to purchase the file, download the custom downloader, download the file, then move the file to Roon (in my case), and also make a backup copy. It also takes some time because the files can be very large.
In addition, Iâm still amazed that I was able to get the Blu Ray rip for SACDs set up on my own, and am afraid to touch it, lest I not be able to figure it out again! ; )
With Qobuz however you just push the â+â button on anything you are listening to and it is instantly added to Roon library.
I sent ~1000 CDs to a service a few years ago and they sent back one small drive with everything uncompressed in AIFF.
I donât have the technical expertise of a number of folks on this forum and so for me, the easiest thing to do was to buy the Roon Nucleus and subscribe to Qobuz. Both integrated effortlessly with dCS.
Cheers!
R
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If you ever visit Japan itâs really worth checking out Tower Records in Shibuya or one of the many used CD shops. They are going strong and have an amazing selection of CDs and LPs. It will bring back memories of years gone by 
Personally I didnât buy any regular CDs for probably 15 years, but continued to buy new SACD releases at a rate of maybe 5-10 per year since the late 2000s. They all got ripped for listening though until late last year when I decided to buy a transport again and try enjoying digital physical media again. Since then Iâve been buying used CDs again, which are really great value.
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âItâs just too complex and needs too much technical skill as far as they are concerned.â
Ahem! Who is âtheyâ? I have enough technical skill to get a PS3 to rip SACDs, and write various kinds of computer code. So I could probably get my head around networking, although Iâll never know as much as Anu. But at home I donât watch TV, and donât have a home phone, so a home wireless network that connects to the world only via the mobile phone network - with a SIM in the router - is sufficient. Listening to music from a CD/SACD transport doesnât (yet) require that I go beyond that. With all the complexities that life throws at us I sometimes think that if it isnât necessary for me to know something, then I might as well not know it. Age is a factor in thisâŚ
They is my close friends.
Yes, we are mostly in our 70s. My friends take one look at my dCS four box and say ( quote) " Thatâs not for me, too complicated". Streaming UPnP? " I am never going to do that". As for talking about PCM, DSD, .flac or .wav files, downloaders , NAS etc., to them I could be speaking Swahili.
I donât. Spent three months a couple of years ago trying 
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thatâs incredible easy nowaday- buy an Innuos or Melco, open drawer, insert disk and have a nip of your fav Gin âŚafter 5-10min, you got uncrompressed Flac or Wav ripped on the internal disk/SSD, data catalog etc. is done automatically. Upnp service is enabled and youâre able to stream via Mosaic!
I am sure that would be amazing, and I used to spend hours rummaging through record/CD stores myself! : )
But today, no longer. This is because in the digital domain, unless you are buying SACDs, you will be able to find the same music in higher resolution than 44.1 via Qobuz and other services.
To drive home this point, letâs take a random band I like in the US called Iron & Wine. They have a talented singer/songwriter named Sam Beam. Their latest album is available on Qobuz at 96kHz/24bit, so, unless you are going for the âexoticâ factor, today you will get higher quality source material online.