classical music source

I listen to classical music primarily from CD sources. The selection of music/performance on CD is enormous, the sound quality is pretty good--many older recordings are nicely remastered and new recordings are quite well recorded (unlike new pop/rock recordings which sound much worse than recordings from 30 to 60 years ago). My CDs have been burned to a server (all in WAV files) for convenience.

I am less enamoured with classical music on LPs--no newer recordings are released on LP, noise tends to be an issue because of the dynamic range of classical music, and I prefer the longer uniterrupted playing of digital material.

I have not paid much attention to high resolution downloads because of the limited selection and because so much of what is out there is of dubious quality (e.g., upsampled CDs being passed off as high-rez). I am waiting till these kinds of issues are sorted out.

Obviously it's not possible to listen to Toscanini/NBC Symphony in today's venues, but for me it's not possible to listen to him on CDs as well.

I agree with Larry's comments. You can always rip CDs later if you want to serve your music up via computer.

Building a worthwhile classical vinyl collection takes real skill IMO, and you miss out on the last 30 years of recordings.

I'm with Larry and Daverz; even though I have a large record collection, excellent turntable and am still buying and listening to classical records. CD's make it easier to listen (once you managed to get realistic sound out of your cd reproduction system (isolation and ac conditioning experimentation is mandatory for this). I often enjoy serious listening while on this forum for example and appreciate not having to "flip the record". But-records do sound wonderful will likely keep their value. I started buying them in about 1963-and I still wish I had every one I ever bought. But I take some satisfaction knowing the friends who 'borrowed' them obviously enjoyed 'em. I made countless cassettes that also disappeared. Back when it was common to record your favorites on a tape you could 'take anywhere'.

For me my classical music source is LPs. I'm pretty lucky that the thrift stores by me have lots of classical music LPs that are really cheap and in very good condition. I also like to listen to Classical music on CDs but mostly LPs.