Why buy CDs?

[pastoralguy]

I am a LONG way from giving up buying CD's . Just love them.

I still remember the thrill of holding the first one I ever encountered and being blown away by the size and feel of it. And, unlike Lps, they didn't wear out or jump or sound like there was bacon frying in the background.

A great little invention.

[mathias broucek]

"Why buy CDs"

1. Sound quality is better than most mass-market downloads
2. The tech for playing them is simpler than setting up facilities needed for high quality downloads
3. You get notes, libretti etc
4. They're cheap (at least for big boxes or 2nd hand)

I will buy downloads when the price is very keen (e.g. the Amazon Sibelius, Glazunov, Grieg etc sets licensed from BIS).

[teamsaint]

I still remember the thrill of holding the first one I ever encountered and being blown away by the size and feel of it. And, unlike Lps, they didn't wear out or jump or sound like there was bacon frying in the background.

A great little invention.

They are, though I will never love them as much as 7" singles, which I still listen to from time to time.
Old punks never die etc ....!!

[pastoralguy]

They are, though I will never love them as much as 7" singles, which I still listen to from time to time.
Old punks never die etc ....!!

Goodness knows what happened to mine. Like my Lego and Matchbox cars they just seemed to disappear over night. ( those Matchbox and Dinky cars would be worth a FORTUNE now...)

[Ferretfancy]

Did you buy this at Gramex on 31st and was it you I spoke to about them? If so, glad to have met you and I wish I had known it was you, we could have talked at length!!

Mike

Yes Mike, that was me. I usually visit Gramex every few weeks, normally on a Saturday. I get a certain enjoyment from the exchange of views while browsing. I do wish the CDs were not in tottering heaps though! Let me know if you are visiting, we might meet up.
Bws.
Ferret

[Ferretfancy]

I still remember the thrill of holding the first one I ever encountered and being blown away by the size and feel of it. And, unlike Lps, they didn't wear out or jump or sound like there was bacon frying in the background.

A great little invention.

Yes indeed, and in future it will always be possible to play them, we can still play cylinders ! On the other hand, download formats are constantly changing, and on future computers today's stuff might become obsolete.

[teamsaint]

Goodness knows what happened to mine. Like my Lego and Matchbox cars they just seemed to disappear over night. ( those Matchbox and Dinky cars would be worth a FORTUNE now...)

Mine are in a big wooden chest, in vaguely alphabetical order, and they are staying with me. Many of them are a memory of the day or the shop I bought them in. Happy days !

Ah yes, all that stuff we should have kept..Captain Scarlet cars, Batmobiles etc etc....

[teamsaint]

Yes indeed, and in future it will always be possible to play them, we can still play cylinders ! On the other hand, download formats are constantly changing, and on future computers today's stuff might become obsolete.

This is one reason I can't be doing with uploading my CDs onto ipod or whatever yet. Its still very young technology, far from user problem free, and will surely get more user friendly over time.
I bought the Rubbra symphonies as a download, but it was £8 against £50, and I really wanted them. First thing I did was burn them to CD.Only download I have bought.

[umslopogaas]

#15 teamsaint, I think if you want to buy whole collections you are going to have to get ahead of the dealers, which probably means becoming one yourself. What tends to happen is that a collection comes up for sale when the owner dies and his/her beneficiaries dont want it. So the executors dispose of it for as much as they can get. That will usually mean selling to a dealer, who will then sell the items individually and hopefully make a profit.

Unless you want the bother of disposing of duplicates and items you dont want, I would avoid whole collections, and buy discriminatingly from dealers and secondhand shops. Two that I've plugged before here and am delighted to have a chance to plug again are Ben Darnton of Ben's Collectors Records in Tunsgate, Guildford and Julian Pelling of Fine Records, George Street, Hove. I've moved away from the south east and its some time since I visited their shops, but they always used to have a good selection of second hand CDs.

[teamsaint]

Thanks, Umsloppers!
That is also the way it works in books, so I am not really surprised. (I think in the book world they are usually after that odd gem that is worth a lot). Just wondered if in the age of ebay, and so on, things bypassed the dealers from time to time.

i'll check out the two you mention If I am in Surrey or Sussex. Becoming a dealer sounds tempting, and probably more fun than the reality !!

[Mahler's3rd]

I still buy CD's, & I used to buy Vinyl a lot. I think if I remember the first 2 x Vinyl records I bought in 1971ish we're Symphonie Fantastique" & "Tarkus", from an old second hand record shop in Bristol. Reason I bought Berlioz's masterpiece was i liked the picture on the cover, And I thought Emerson Lake & Palmer we're very cool, so bought "Tarkus" as well. I have'nt downloaded anything though i do use my own MP3 player a lot and transfer CD's onto it

[umslopogaas]

teamsaint, being a dealer would be fun if you could get good stuff to sell! However, to get to the gold you have to shift a lot of dross. In the case of vinyl, most of it is wrecked and/or worth next to nothing anyway. CDs are much tougher, but there is still an awful lot of worthless stuff out there.

Looking at classical vinyl on ebay, most items are up for ninety nine pence and attract no bids. Just occasionally you get early stereo Columbias or Deccas and then we're talking money. I'm not sure if its now finished, but earlier today there was a copy of an early stereo Columbia of Kogan and Gilels (not Emil, but his wife or sister) playing violin duos and it was bid to over five hundred quid when I last looked. That's a lot of money for one old LP. Alas, that's one I dont possess ...

[pastoralguy]

teamsaint, being a dealer would be fun if you could get good stuff to sell! However, to get to the gold you have to shift a lot of dross. In the case of vinyl, most of it is wrecked and/or worth next to nothing anyway. CDs are much tougher, but there is still an awful lot of worthless stuff out there.

Looking at classical vinyl on ebay, most items are up for ninety nine pence and attract no bids. Just occasionally you get early stereo Columbias or Deccas and then we're talking money. I'm not sure if its now finished, but earlier today there was a copy of an early stereo Columbia of Kogan and Gilels (not Emil, but his wife or sister) playing violin duos and it was bid to over five hundred quid when I last looked. That's a lot of money for one old LP. Alas, that's one I dont possess ...

There's an Lp of Igor Oistrakh going for £400 (Brahms sonatas) that I would love but only because the cover is the photo that inspired me to want to learn the violin. I've only ever seen a very small reproduction on the back of the Lp my father had of him playing the Tchaikovsky concerto with his father conducting.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Six.

Frau Alpensinfonie recently bought some audio book downloads for her iPad, and these were backed up on her PC. Recently, she found they had disappeared from her iPad, so we looked the backup. That too had disappeared

[gurnemanz]

CD buyer and addict reporting in ... though I'm abstaining at the moment - taking a sabbatical to listen to neglected backlog.

Downloading is useful if you only want individual tracks, which happens more often with jazz and rock items but sometimes with Lieder.

I sometimes decide I would like to compare several different versions of the same Lied or jazz vocal which have to be retrieved from various CDs or box sets. Then it would obviously be neater and easier to line them up as a tracklist from digital storage on a hard drive. Most of the time, though, I am quite happy to stand up and go to the CD shelf.