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When did you digitize your CDs and LPs? I still haven’t...

I’m a 46 year old guy who came up on LPs and cassettes, got into CDs and then stumbled into the world of online music where I’m still trying to figure out what to do.

20 years or so ago when people started getting excited about digitizing their CD collections, I never bothered. I have maybe 900-1000 CDs and the idea of having to “rip” them never appealed to me. Heck, I never even liked the word “rip” and the action seemed time consuming and boring as heck to me. Same for LPs.

These days, I still have all my obsolete media but I’m a Tidal HiFi subscriber and have come to love streaming. Still, there’s a lot I have on CD and LP that Tidal doesn’t have and I’m wondering if it’s time to step into the present and get something like an Innuos Zen Mk III so I can stream, rip, and store at least all of my CDs.

Is it time to step into the present, or will I be fine rocking my Nakamichi CDP-2A until it dies and then just buying another CD player or transport? That certainly seems less expensive these days than a fancy streamer/server/“ripper”.
pip_helix
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,432 posts
 
I don't use CDP at all.  All my music comes from HD (where it is just data) and I also tend to buy CDs used, mostly from Amazon.  Audio CD-Rs create easy legal way of copying CDs from friends.  I copy such CDs to HD, but have to keep Audio CD-R copy (media that pays royalties).  

Yes, compression is very bad but often necessary.  Without compression most of the people with smaller systems or boomboxes wouldn't be able to listen.  It almost looks like we need two different media - one for mass marked and another one uncompressed for audiophiles.  Unfortunately we don't represent any buying power and things are getting worse (going toward MP3).
Why not to sell uncompressed CDs and compressed MP3s?  
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 
I don't use CDP at all.
That's obvious 
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,432 posts
 
I’m surprised that people can hear any media induced jitter from CD or CD-R. I can understand that on the receiving end (DAC) D/A conversion clock has to be recreated from incoming S/Pdif stream, but in CDP constant linear speed is created by comparison between 44.1kHz crystal based clock and the data stream from CD. Since 44.1kHz clock is used to control linear speed (data rate) the same clock can be used for re-clocking without over or underflow errors. AFAIK modern CDPs have large FIFO buffers that clock out data at precise 44.1kHz crystal based clock. Of course there is still connection jitter, DAC own jitter etc., but CD (or CD-R) bit to bit time differences should not matter. Perhaps there are older CDPs without buffers?

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