The PSA website devotes a lot of discussion to various aspects of playing CDs and SACDs so it is an audience uniquely sympathetic to developments in physical music access - not the least of which is Oppo withdrawing from making CD mechanisms.
Another equally important aspect of CDs is their availability.
This week, my wife noticed a new CD from a Brazilian performer, Ivan Lins together with Gilson Peranzzetta entitled “Cumplicidade”. As is our custom she asked me to get a copy of this for her at the best price. Amazon has the digital version of this CD - but no CD is available either from Amazon or any third party. I checked Amazon uk, fr, ca and de - same situation. The were two places I found the actual CD, a number of unknown websites in Brazil and Dusty Groove in Chicago. I ordered the CD from Dusty Groove and in doing so got to wondering as to whether Amazon not offering the actual CD is the next deliberate iteration in the slow death of the CD and whether there is an interest in the PSA community to avoid this happening. At the very least sharing information on reputable on line sources for CDs of various musical styles that will offer an alternative to the strangulation of the format by Amazon and Apple? I do not use either iTunes or Amazon Prime Music because I don’t like paying for something that is totally etherial, compressed and which in time may require a yearly fee to access. And if I ever thought about doing so - I certainly won’t now if Bear Family, Ace in London, ECM, Raven, Cherry Red - and all the other sources of actual CDs covered by the SecondDisc website are going to find it hard to make ends meet.
What are others’ thoughts on this turn of events?
Mike
The CD is dying but there will always be so many CDs available on the used market it kind of doesn’t matter. More “new” music than you’ll ever be able to listen to in 100 lifetimes.
I do like the packaging and all of physical media, lots of Mosaic and Bear Family purchases. On the other hand, I’m swimming in physical media. Seems like lots of these companies won’t make it but something will take their place. It always does. I miss the old Rhino Records, but there are more re-issue companies now (and great Rhino sets on eBay for cheap). Give me a re-issue comapany that sells 44.1/16 downloads and in-depth background PDFs to tell the story, I’m in!!
IMO, the disc will not die. It will be back like LP’s. For my money, I like and expect physical media. Something to hold, see, and store. What happens if all your music is on a hard drive that fails or gets hacked? Or you have to rely on the cloud? No thanks. Maybe I’m old school ( should be renamed the smart school ). Many I’m a dinosaur, but I like something more permanent for my hard earned money. Long like physical media regardless the form!
You may be a dinosaur but remember, if T. Rex were alive today he would still kick butt.
Going to POA next week so will look for it in the local record shops. See if there’s any joy. Lins is a magnificent composer.
I still can’t be bothered to ‘go pick out a CD and put it in the player’. I’m old(er) but have been connected to technology since my early 20s when small office networks took off up to and including, the worst analogy ever, the cloud.
I have ~200 silver discs, I’ve given away far more, including a number of SACDs that I bought back when it was introduced. I’ve ripped these to ISO. Ha. Some were ‘valuable’ so I sold them.
I also have never had a proper transport to spin them nor the DS, BHK, M700 that I do have now.
My ripped music, ~7000 albums, all purchased and ripped by me, along with Tidal is such a vast quantity of music I’m continually discovering new stuff in my collection after 30 years!
The last CD I purchased was the first Boston album remaster, done by Tom Scholz. Bought from Amazon and the jewel case came smashed. Lame. Ripped it to WAV and no longer care to fuss with the disc.
I don’t Iike having to store them or much of anything frankly. It weighs me down.
I had a Oppo 205, it sounded rather pedestrian to me. Sold it. I think the DS renders the difference between a CD and a good stream moot but then I don’t have a DMP so I can’t say that wouldn’t be better. I know it certainly would be limiting and less convenient which is contrary to my enjoyment of music.
Brett
Ripped all of my >1200 discs with my MelcoN1ZS10 after discovering that the Melco -playing straight from the build in high medical grade harddiscs as well from a usb connected extern harddisc- betters my PWT. Never heard the DMP but I doubt it will better the Melco. Qobuz via Melco delivering terrific quality and selling everything in 44.1/16 (and/or 24bit) downloads including in-depth background PDF’s I doubt I will buy any fysical plastic discs in future. In contrary I’m planning to sell both my PWT and all of my discs to recoup high end investment and/or invest in upgrades… 
Geez. . . I have over 20,000 silver discs. … and I love the format. If it goes away that would not be my favorite outcome, but I’m good. . …
Complete opposite here -I’m purchasing more discs than ever before.
The price for quality used disks is so low that I can’t ignore them. Online retailers are out there and you can find boxes of them at Garage/Tag sales. I can get 20 for $10 sometimes.
I, too, have had excellent luck with used CDs. Often they are in superb condition.
The point I am trying to say is simple. If I am going to spend my money on music, I prefer a hard copy in hand. I also rip all my redbook cd’s to a modded mac mini, with Roon, Tidal to a Bridge II in my DSD dac. My point is I want a physical copy in hand for my dollars leaving my hand. Yes I can download then burn a disc. But for that ( lack of hard copy, case, booklets, liner notes ) I would expect a discount. Hell I see the standard redbook downloads are often more than the cd version. And for that among the other reasons I mention. I hope cd’s make a comeback.
CD’s are all I do. No turntable. No streaming. No computer connected to my audio system.
My flac downloads get burned to silver discs for playback in my DMP.
I have 7-8 thousand discs so I’m totally committed to this format. If this format dies I’ll be up schitt creek without a paddle.
The lack of liner notes, etc. is a disadvantage of downloads. Some sources provide pdf copies, but this is not the same as a beautifully printed booklet in your hand.
All I use as source components are the DMP… and an fm tuner. Since acquiring the DMP and its ability to play sacd, I of course, went ahead and purchased a dozen or so sacd’s and love what they sound like in my system. But… the bigger bonus for me is the outstanding sound quality that redbook gives me through the DMP/DS combo. Just simply superb in every way and at times better than sacd. I am very happy to stay with the silver disk… till death do us part!!!
Completely agree. It’s one of the reasons I’m doing fewer and fewer downloads and more and more Redbook CD purchases since acquiring my DMP.
Used CD are an amazing bargain now. And an unknown minion has gone through the trouble of opening the shrink wrap, struggled with the sticky tape and probably pre cracked the stupid jewel case for me. I use Tidal to discover the new. When I really want to listen and relax a CD on the PWT thru the SGSD is the ticket. On my system stored files even hi res sound inferior to red book.
I have more SACDs than CDs and have no desire to stream. I still buy CDs (tho not as fast as in the past.) Ripping thousands of SACDs will take quite a bit of time (it took quite a while to do the 800 or so I’ve already done.) Reliable storage space for ripped SACDs isn’t free: I’d probably need another eight or ten terabytes (which has to be at least doubled for backup…) Tho the costs of storage can be amortized pretty easily, backing up is a continual tax on time computer resources and internet bandwidth (it took over a month to back up just my currently ripped SACDs the first time. I really don’t want to ever need to do a restore…) I’ve got maybe twenty SACDs ripped but not in my collection yet just because getting (or scanning) covers and liner notes and curating the metadata gets to be a drag.
The missing liner notes is my biggest complaint about downloads, and I have a lot of them. How hard, or expensive, could it be to include a PDF of the booklets, even if they had to be scanned? It’s particularly annoying with high res downloads where we are paying a considerable premium over what a physical CD would cost.