Redbook Keeps Surprising

Is there a moderator we can reach out to?  Pretty clear that a warning is far overdue.

Why on earth would any of you ditch your physical discs?  You might need a back-up.  Further, it's fairly obvious that ripping and selling is wrong.

As for redbook, well, the sound quality will depend not only on the DAC but on the mastering work (same goes for hi-res PCM or DSD).  Those who are seriously interested should join the Steve Hoffman forum and search for threads discussing specific albums.

Cleeds: I do avoid the practice, please look at my system/room photos, you'll see I have what is a very large collection that is ongoing and constantly growing, not shrinking. I was asking a straight-up question and thank you for your answer.

Cleeds/others who know the law: One other serious question,...consider this scenario; I buy a disc from a regular retail source, pay the prescribed market price, listen to it, don't rip it or save it in any way and then grow tired of it, and give it to a friend/donating it; is that a violation of copyright law as well? Asking this as I've had the thought of leaving my entire setup and collection to my son but on the chance that when I leave this earth, he either accepts it full-on or if he doesn't want the hassle of what is now over 10,000 discs, I may ask him to donate it to a music library at a college that I favor but I do not want my estate in violation of copyright law.

I would think a lot of audiophiles with LP or CD/SACD/etc...collections would have similar thoughts (about family members at least).

One other side note; I mentioned the pictures of my system/collection; the shelf photos were taken in early July 2014; if you stop over today, you'd see there is alot more added and none subtracted (and much sitting on the floor in need of shelves). Not bragging, only further supporting the comment that I do in fact 'avoid the practice' as mentioned below.

dh901: if your comment about needing a moderator to issue a warning is directed in some way at me, let me know what your issue is, if one still remains and we'll deal with it.  

To the original topic,...RBCD does keep surprising both in terms of RBCD traditional formats that are on the market as well as what I would consider RB variants/offshoots like XRCD, XRCD2 and XRCD24.  There are some phenomenal discs on my shelves (Cafe Blue from Barber is indeed among them) as are various Shelby Lynn and Melody Gardot discus and myriad others of all sorts of musical styles that amaze me daily as to how they sound. Part of it is the front-end i have is known for extracting every bit of detail there is precisely from the disc and the downstream system/cabling is chosen for its overall musical effect however, there is no mistaking that the quality of RBCD format pressings and the mastering that goes into them from many labels such as Venus Records, Stockfisch Records and many others has gone off the charts compared to ten, twenty and thirty years ago.  The format and peoples' creations for it have finally (IMHO) become audiophile-grade over the last few years....

zephyr24069

" ...consider this scenario; I buy a disc from a regular retail source, pay the prescribed market price, listen to it, don't rip it or save it in any way and then grow tired of it, and give it to a friend/donating it; is that a violation of copyright law as well?"

No, that would be perfectly legal. If the disc became a collector's item and you sold it for substantially more than you paid for it, that sale would be legal, too ... as long as you didn't retain a copy for your use.