The Rapid Rise (& Fall) of the CD

CD's burned from Qobuz .wav files are really quite good.

These forum battles over who is right are part and parcel of a venerable American tradition whichever side of the political aisle you are on.

Patton Marches On

+1 @kennymacc -

I totally agree with what you said about CDs and LP . When my age group is gone, those two formats will pretty-much dissolve. I have almost 600 LP’s and 350 CDs. CDs are with five bucks used. LPs are on average worth $10. By comparison Neil Young 50+ whatever year old LP, everybody knows this is nowhere, sells for $30. Who would buy new LPs of poor recording quality because you can get the same poor quality for a subscription To an audio service. The vinyl industry is really shooting itself straight in the mouth by doing stuff like that. My local record store will give me half of what an LP sells for on Discogs. That means my album is worth $30 cause I kept it for 100 years I get $15 for it. I hate Discogs! 
There’s my take on the dissolution of quality audio.

BENT!

@mapman 

yeah, they make great coasters.

bent

An interesting piece appeared recently in Stereophile about this topic. It concedes the statistical decline in CD (and vinyl) sales in favor of streaming, but then argues for keeping one's physical media for a variety of excellent reasons. Here's a link: https://www.stereophile.com/content/it-isnt-just-music

Reasons to keep physical media (from the Stereophile piece just posted):

1. Control. Streaming services may not exist forever. The financial health of even Qobuz and Tidal "is largely unknown." 

2. Control. Streaming services often don't provide information about which version or mastering of a given "song" is being played. 

3. Control. Searching on streaming services, even using Roon, is often difficult or even impossible. If you keep your CDs in a sensible order, you can find what you're looking for very easily.

4. Control. With so-called classical music, there's a lot of information one wants to know that streaming services rarely provide. The Strereophile essay indicates that, with a given symphony, it was impossible to determine from the stream which orchestra was performing it! But what about when the recording was made? (Von Karajan recorded Beethoven's Ninth at least four times, three times with the BPO, but streaming services rarely reveal this kind of information.) How about where it was recorded? Audiophiles speak of hearing the venue's ambiance on a superlative recording. But streamed recordings will rarely, if ever, identify what that venue was. And streaming services identify "songs," as mentioned above, which can be movements in a larger orchestral or instrumental piece. That fact can be obscured or even effaced.