Redbook Keeps Surprising

So, let's see if I have this right ... If I burn a copy of a CD that I own to play in my car for personal enjoyment, I'm okay as far as "the law" is concerned. But ... If I play the burned CD in my car for awhile, then give it to a friend at no charge, just as a gift, then I'm an "unethical" person?

If I have an expensive bicycle that I replace with a new one, and I give my old bicycle to a valued friend at no cost, am I then somehow "cheating" the manufacturer of the old bicycle out of a sale? How about if I sell my old bicycle to a private party ... does that make me an "unethical person?" 

I like the philosophy of The Grateful Dead ... "Once out into the air, it is  no longer ours, it belongs to our fans."  They even allowed private recordings to be  taken at their live concerts. That's why we have so many Grateful Dead bootlegs. 

My take?  If I buy a new CD, the musician makes money. The CD at that point is my personal property. It no longer is the property of the musician or the studio that produced it.  It is mine to do with what I want. The musician doesn't deserve to make money in perpetuity on resale, after resale, after resale of the same CD. No more than the bicycle manufacturer deserves to make money from subsequent resale of used bicycles. 

There are just too damned many attorneys who are desperate for work out there ... and they are grinding the country to a halt with their rules and regulations.  

Enough is enough ... 

OP

^^^ And by the way, Redbook CD's can sound fantastic when played back through a highly resolving system.

 One key is to find the recordings that were done by a recording engineer who kept his hands off of the control panel knobs and has left the reverb dial alone ... and just lets the natural sound of the recording come through. Those are the CD's that sound terrific.

So, what are we supposed to do to remain "ethical?" Are we supposed to buy fifty crappy sounding CD's until we find one that's worth keeping? And what is the "ethical" thing to do with the crappy sounding ones? Would that be to just throw them in the trash? Would it be to just accept the crappy sounding ones and  learn to live with them? 

I submit that the unethical ones are those who own the studios that produce crappy sounding digital recordings and then gouge the public for an inferior product. They have become their own worst enemy.  

Let's get it straight ... Most of the studios today are run by a bunch of bean counters who couldn't care less about the end user. For them, its all about the money, and nothing else. 

OP

+2,charelsdad; and remember that improving your AC isolation and conditioning will yield big rewards.Cheers to the 'humble' CD.

someone explain to me why cd's sound better to me than the file of that cd.

Hi bsmith,

In my system, it’s just the opposite. The ripped cd file sounds better than the cd spinning in the super heavy transport of my old Esoteric K-01. Many others in audioland have also found ripped files to sound better than cd’s.

To be fair, I have also upgraded to the new generation Esoteric N-05 dac/network player. The usb implementation in the N-05 is miles ahead of the K-01. New digital gets cheaper and better in doing wonders for redbook.

When I switch to hi-res files, the difference isn’t that dramatic.
My entire redbook collection now sounds better than ever and the good recordings sound as good as hi-res.

Jon. :)

(Ptss, we can only hope YKWYA doesn’t come forth to tell us what I already know about the chip residing in the Esoteric N-05)