Does anyone still use or like vinyl?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Oh dear, I was thinking of getting one of those Brennan machines!
is there something 'not right' about it, that we should be told?
Doesn't it do what it says 'on the tin'?

It probably is OK in that it plays the compressed files. It's the ludicrous suggestion that you don't play your CDs because to do so is such an arduous task. Much less arduous, I would suggest, than hunting around for that mislaid Brennan remote control to key in the album/track you want to hear. Anyway, it's only an oversized iPod.

[teamsaint]

There are some interesting issues here.
CD has already proved a fairly long lived format...and I would assume that in terms of data storage its hopelessly outdated. However it remains a popular and reasonably convenient format.
An Inspector calls suggests that ripped and burned Cd-r's may not have a long shelf life....have I got this right?
In publishing, print on demand , and E formats will take a large part of the market, although I am convinced that paper has a long future as part of the mix.
In music, it certainly makes sense, for the industry at least,to try to move the market away from CD's as they are sold now, towards download.
For the large part of the market that still likes a "real" product in their hand, like me, I would have thought that packaging downloads so that the customer can create their own hard copy...sleeve notes, cover art etc, could be made more attractive. The industry gets to avoid all that nasty warehousing, pressing, risk etc...and the public gets what it wants...well kind of !
Actually, that's not what I want to see, but you can see the attraction for the record company accountant looking at their CD pressing bill.
I don' know the economics of CD "print on demand", though I suspect they wouldn't bring product price down...as Naxos are showing, there is upwards pressure on price already.

[Dave2002]

Oh dear, I was thinking of getting one of those Brennan machines!
is there something 'not right' about it, that we should be told?
Doesn't it do what it says 'on the tin'?

How many CDs do you want to store? A Classic iPod can store rather a lot, while a Mac Mini plus a 500 or 750 Gbyte drive can hold very many.

I have seen and heard a Brennan. It was OK for background music, and the owner is quite pleased with it. In honesty it didn't sound terrible, but I didn't hear it under decent listening conditions.

Others seem to think you can do rather better for the same money. The limitations on formats does seem a problem area to me. Either compressed .mp3 or space wasting .wav files.

[MrGongGong]

The limitations on formats does seem a problem area to me. Either compressed .mp3 or space wasting .wav files.

"space wasting" ????
given that "space" is now absurdly cheap i'm not sure that an uncompressed format is "wasting"
I guess it depends on whether you are interested in the actual sound of the music rather than music as a commodity that you have to possess

[Bryn]

I started burning to CD-R in early 1998. At that time the lowest discount price I could find for blank CD-Rs was £1.60 each for Sony branded 74 minute discs. They still play perfectly well today. They do, however, have a gold reflective layer. Currently spinning here is Michael Finnissy's Ngano, burned to CD-R in June 1998. On the same disc is Shostakovich's 14th Symphony (Joan Rogers, Neal Davies, BBCNOW, Mark Wigglesworth). Both performances recorded from Radio 3 FM. I have CD-R from the intervening period which have not lasted. I now try to stick to Taiyo Yuden manufactured discs when I can afford them. I also have a few 'bronzed' pressed discs from the PDO debacle.

[Bryn]

"space wasting" ????
given that "space" is now absurdly cheap i'm not sure that an uncompressed format is "wasting"
I guess it depends on whether you are interested in the actual sound of the music rather than music as a commodity that you have to possess

Ahem. MrGG, .wav files are decidedly space wasting. All the data needed to represent the music in them can be trimmed to around half the quantity by FLAC or other lossless codecs.

[Dave2002]

"space wasting" ????
given that "space" is now absurdly cheap i'm not sure that an uncompressed format is "wasting"
I guess it depends on whether you are interested in the actual sound of the music rather than music as a commodity that you have to possess

Flac or Alac lossless compressed formats will store about twice as many tracks as .wav can do in the same storage space. However it is possible to connect an external drive to the Brennan unit, and a 750 Gbyte or 1 Tbyte unit should be able to store thousands of CDs.

There are also people who claim that .wav files sound better to them than equivalent lossless formats. This has so far defied rational explanation.

[David-G]

Bryn, might I ask what is a Taiyo Yuden manufactured disc, and how I would recognise one if I came across one?

As for .wav files sounding better than files in equivalent lossless formats, this is patently nonsense, unless ... I suppose that the uncompressed files would have a greater error-correction capability if there was any degradation of the data.

[Tony Halstead]

Taiyo Yuden manufactured disc

JVC

[Bryn]

Bryn, might I ask what is a Taiyo Yuden manufactured disc, and how I would recognise one if I came across one?

As for .wav files sounding better than files in equivalent lossless formats, this is patently nonsense, unless ... I suppose that the uncompressed files would have a greater error-correction capability if there was any degradation of the data.

David-G, this should tell you what you want to know about Taiyo Yuden. Their discs are generally held to be the most reliable. However, due to that very fact, there are those who seek to produce and sell fake Taiyo Yuden media. Don't expect to pay less than £30 per hundred for the most basic Taiyo Juden branded CD-Rs.

[MrGongGong]

Ahem. MrGG, .wav files are decidedly space wasting. All the data needed to represent the music in them can be trimmed to around half the quantity by FLAC or other lossless codecs.

Indeed
but my point was more that space is now so absurdly cheap that i'm not sure that I would consider it "waste"
if I can buy a 500 gig HD for £60 etc etc

[David-G]

Indeed
but my point was more that space is now so absurdly cheap that i'm not sure that I would consider it "waste"
if I can buy a 500 gig HD for £60 etc etc

But with high-quality music, 500 Gb does not go such a long way. I have virtually filled my 500 Gb drive, and likewise my second one which is a backup of the first. And £100 or so for another couple of drives is not a trivial amount of money. I should probably seriously think of compressing my wavs to flacs.

[Dave2002]

As for .wav files sounding better than files in equivalent lossless formats, this is patently nonsense, unless ... I suppose that the uncompressed files would have a greater error-correction capability if there was any degradation of the data.

It is almost certainly not the case that .wav files sound better than other lossless formats, though there are some just plausible arguments based on the timing in the realtime playback systems. Another possibility is that there are errors (differences) in the software playback of .wav compared with .flac or .alac files, though this seems largely unlikely. Most people seem to agree that all lossless formats sound the same. The differences which some claim to hear and favour, could easily come down to something simple such as a higher playback volume.

Other impressions may relate to specific discs, such as HDCD discs, which could get ripped without the extension to 20 bits data from the CD if not done correctly.

Finally, software coding errors in the software either on encoding or decoding, could cause problems, It's not so long ago that a couple of versions of iTunes had software bugs which rendered some CD rips unlistenable to. Re flac encoding/decoding, there is a consensus that the software is OK and it has been designed and tested thoroughly.

We assume that there are are no significant errors in the software and hardware we use every day, but mostly we have to take this on trust, and also use kit and software which we like.

[An_Inspector_Calls]

An Inspector calls suggests that ripped and burned Cd-r's may not have a long shelf life....have I got this right?

Yes, that was my experience. I think I was buying mainly JVC CD-audios in the early 00s, but there was a manufacturer mix in what I had. I really can't say whether one manufacturer of CD-audios is better or worse than any other. I was burning them on a Yamaha CDR1300. By 2007 I noticed that many (if not the majority) of the first CD-audios I'd burnt were failing. Some of the failures were less than 5 years old! The usual failures were large drop-outs especially towards the end of the CD-audio recording, which implies the outer edges were degrading. Visual inspection didn't offer any clues. However, I discovered that if I cleaned the laser lens of the Yamaha and then played the offending tracks they would play. But then the next CD-audio, or perhaps the one after that, would run into the same problems. So It suggests the CD-audios were shedding their coating onto the lens. EAC scanning on a computer confirmed the problems/solutions heard on the Yamaha. Fortunately I was able to eventually rip the whole CD-audio collection but I reckon it was a lucky escape.

Since many CD producers are now using CD-Rs (eg Lyrita) I would be cautious about their prospects for a long life.

Given the expense of CD-audios (albeit small), the time and cost it takes to burn them, label and store them, and the lack of proven reliability, I'd much rather just take the initial digital music file and dump it to a magnetic disc. Yes, magnetic disc can fail as well, but it's far easier to protect against that than CD-audio failure. The same magnetic disc (or actually multiple discs) can then also store any downloads, and iPlayer dumps can go straight there as well. Converting to .flac saves space and also reduces transfer times between varuious devices. I play using wireless connected squeezeboxes.

[An_Inspector_Calls]

But with high-quality music, 500 Gb does not go such a long way. I have virtually filled my 500 Gb drive, and likewise my second one which is a backup of the first. And £100 or so for another couple of drives is not a trivial amount of money. I should probably seriously think of compressing my wavs to flacs.

You can now buy chassis-mount 3 TB SATA drives for £100. Reckoning 1 CD=250 MBytes, that's 0.8p/CD! OK, 1.6p/CD if you use shadowed back-up.