You make good points about owning a physical product, albeit with small artwork. I have stored my CD collection away after ripping it in a lossless format. I have a CD player but very rarely use it. I still buy CD's but almost always rip them and listen to them on my Squeezebox Server and Touch, connected to my Majestic DAC. The little booklets inside the CD cases are informative and I do read them but they are not the same as the 12 inch artwork of an LP!

Like Sylvain I think digital encoding playback has come on a long way in recent years so most compressed formats sound reasonable. They aren't lossless (I think of Pete Waterman's sliced bread metaphor about digitising music, the loaf is shorter because of the crumbs on the floor) but A lot of produced music is quite in your face so perhaps there is less to lose? I can remember some rough sounding CD players (and productions) in the 1980's. I stuck with vinyl and kept my records but eventually I did buy a CD player in the 1990's...

Before streamng you had to have physical media or listen to the radio. Most people had stereos, few had hi-fi's, [FF through the rambling...] and compact portable systems are smaller and better sounding nowadays, if used correctly!

Your eyes are that good? Mine aren’t.

That's the pleasure (owning) of collecting, if you see what I mean.

No they aren't. I'm in my fifties. I read the booklet whilst doing the rip.

Sorry Jon I digressed onto banal tech nostalgia. I agree about owning physical media and buy far more CD's than downloads. I ran out of space for my CD's and decided I wanted to give my LP's pride of place so realised I should box the CD's up and keep them safe. I also have a lot of books in my house and in the last year have enjoyed building more bookcases to house them. I recently had an evening of playing numerous guitars and basses... it is nice to have a collection even if we just look at them most of the time. I see your point about having collections.

   I hope cd is around for a long time yet. My collection is around 1,000, but I’m starting to rip them to a server. We’re moving house in two weeks and the new listening space doesn’t really have enough room for the rack that stores them. However, I too will leave my LP collection on display in pride of place. 

Buying server/streamer that rips cd has shown me that 16/44.1 can sound terrific if the transport is a good one.

Mick.

Lucky you!

I have a lot trouble with computers not down loading music but transferring it to my music player don't know why I just do. I could rip my CDs to a hard drive but I don't have the means to do so, I do know how to do it and what I need to do it but again it's the transferring I have trouble with. I know the main reason for me buying a portable music player was that a lot of cars now don't have CD players so I thought I would get in early and learn how to do it but that has not worked out good for me. By the way my car has the means to play both and in the past I have bought new music both on CD and vinyl of the same album (now I know what you lot are going to say) but it's just easier for me.

I just enjoy looking at all my collections

 I AM JUST OLD FASHION and I know that.

Once my transport and knowledge of ripping software are better, I would like to digitise my entire collection and create multiple back ups.

I don't have many rarity items well I don't think so anyway the only one I do have that I know about is by BLONDIE and it took me a few years to find a copy but it was one to (nearly) complete my BLONDIE collection. I'm not one to collect rare vinyl or CDs I just buy what I like, and didn't get any of blondie greatest hits has I didn't see the point as it was just repeating tracks I already have, the album was Essential Blondie-Picture This Live- limited edition 1998 copy and it only came out on CD (I do like live recordings) I'm lucky that my CD player is not a noisy one so I don't have a problem with hearing it in the background. I do see your point in you ripping your collection to preserve the physical condition and it's something I should probably do myself. 

This is leading us to a similar WIGIG conclusion as vinyl, except there were enough old vinyl engineers still alive to resuscitate vinyl.

It wasn't too difficult, provided somebody could make the pickup cartridges, make the tonearms and construct a turntable. Not forgetting cutting lathes, the wax mix and its press, the electro-less chemical silvering process and the high-build electro-plating process, the "recipe" for the plastic, the press itself, the packaging, its printing, then the distribution network. Difficult enough!

Compare the above with making all the intricate parts and the laser and the microchips from Taiwan. CD is so reliant on modern technology and the considerably more significant investment in CD and player manufacture that it might suffer its own extinction event - final - gone!

Ripping will have been to blame. But then take it to the logical conclusion that high fidelity sound reproduction is a minority pastime (yes it is!), then software might "evolve" to the lowest common denominator - MP3!

We are seeing it happen! A computer with a proper sound card? Question to Ash: did we not discuss this?

The truth, however, is that CD is so technically superior to vinyl, you'd think the human race would want to keep it. Common or garden vinyl (which describes 99% of my favourite records) is the equivalent of 12 bit, yet CD is 16 bit. The "virtue signalling" bat-eared can hear deeper into absolutely nothing and insist on 20 bit (plus 4 bits of non-audio information making 24 bit).

There is absolutely nothing wrong with CD! The technology is fine. The way it's been used to pay back the millions in investment has been to blame - the loudness wars - the remasters. And then, the marketing of hi-fi CD players - the mucking about bending the sound quality to differentiate between brands - a cut-throat business if ever I've seen one.

The artisan never had a place in compact disc. It might have looked that way, but having worked on the inside, all the transports were rebadged Philips, leaving very little to work with.

Graham, we spoke about transports but I still have more to learn about ripping. Until I am confident that ripped files I produce are exactly what's on the disc, I will hold on to my CDs for dear life. I have both USB and SATA disc drives so I can connect them to any type of computer.

I liked your post as always very interesting and you put some valid points across. the one I do have a big problem with is the loudness wars. In that I have a lot of CDs that when I go to play them after playing the one before it it's as if the volume has been turned down. the remastering can be a problem too and sometimes it's not as good as the vinyl or even the CD copy it's supposed to have been made better of ( I could not think of a better way saying it) I do like playing CDs, Has I have said some I just can't get on vinyl or as a download and as for streaming no chance, Ash made a good point against streaming as you don't own that music and it can be taking away at any time this is not something they can do if you own the physical copy. I do remember some time ago of a mother that had lost her son and his music collection was all from it--es and was told that the music he had was not his and that she had no rights too (can't remember the out come of that) but if he had the CD or vinyl it would have been hers to do what she wanted to do with it

It is like a lot of video games nowadays; it is nearly all DLC (downloadable content) rather than disc media so often you are paying for access rights rather than ownership of the content. Subscription services are just the same. People can pay a lot of money into such services but once support for the servers reaches end of life and is discontinued, the consumer is left with access rights to something that no longer allows access... I'm personally not interested in the convenience sell-out.

Me too I like Youtube for finding new music but a good record shop is even better (when they can open) plus I can meet other people with the same interest in music, but NOT always the same kind but still it's good to get out and talk and meet new people. I would like to get more into computer audio but I don't have the funds and what money I do have I feel is better spent on improving my system and as I've said I am not good with computers (which is a BIG problem) plus I do think that buying new music is the best way of improving what I have AND appreciate what I have too.

I have just put an order in for some CuSat50 cables to connect the CD player to my amp I'm in the process of replacing my cables to all Graham Slee when fund are available after this it will be back to appreciating what I have, as further improvements will mean spending A lot more money and I mean ££££

1.5m Lautus phono-XLR (used between Bitzie and Proprius)

0.6m CuSat50 phono-phono (used between Majestic and Solo)

Dual-mono single-ended. From a clean environment and hardly used.

I still collect DVDs and Blu-ray discs plus I still have my VHS collection I don't have anything to play them on but I still keep them, they are mainly of Liverpool.F.C I just not got round to converting them. I know I can't get them any where as they were made for the supporters club they run and only given to us club members. One day I'll get round to converting them one day.

I told you I was old school.

In order for CD to "come back" it has to be almost dead and we haven't quite reached that point...yet. However, CDs and physical media in general are long gone from the mainstream where streaming is the only real concern anymore.

CD sticks around as a niche format and the pressings are far smaller now than they used to be. One indie label I know of used to move between 5,000-15,000 copies per title in the 90s if it was a "good" selling album for them. Now they do CD pressings of 200-300 copies for the die hards and 60% of their revenue comes from Bandcamp digital downloads. That's from the horse's mouth.

I still play the physical discs because I prefer to do things that way, but not for any rational reason. It's just easier for me as I do not have a NAS set up yet and get enjoyment out of playing one album at a time in my single tray CD player.

Even if I were going to a full NAS system, I'm not planning to get rid of my physical discs. Learned the hard way before that it was a bad idea, and I do like having the album art and all that. I have over 4,000 CDs and many of them are in Jazzloft style sleeves (converts them to mini-LPs) which preserve all of the art (front AND back) but save a ton of space and the discs don't get damaged.

I still buy CDs on a regular basis also, because typically I'm searching for a particular edition or mastering. Also, not all things are easily available as legit digital downloads, especially if your tastes veer outside the mainstream/top 40 stuff.

I'm old school and proud of it.

As I have said a lot I'm not good with computers all this sound cards, NAS drives, DACs and other things you need to play music  to get the best out of it, I've been reading a post on here about it and to me it's a lot of trouble and hassle just to play music, and then am I getting the best sound? That post I was reading was also on about the noise coming from the computer and other things to me it seems a big hassle. I've given up reading it because it was getting vary complicated and beyond my understanding. I know one day it will be the norm and the only way but that will be when I'm long gone. I know young people that are or getting into the old ways of playing music because they like the sound and as you have said the ART work that comes with the vinyl, CDs. So may be the young people will keep it going.

One other thing is the expense of going down that route I just not got the funds to get any where near the sound quality I'm getting now from my Vinyl and CDs

The simplest way I know of playing digital audio files is through a computer hooked up to a USB DAC running Foobar2000. Drag and drop and hit play but it's not necessarily intuitive for everyone.

Even a friend of mine that is involved in music production and has a day job of working on computers, building out networks, removing ransomware, recovering data, etc. prefers to listen to physical CDs and vinyl LPs rather than digital files.

He does this because he likes artwork and physical product and doesn't want to think about his day job when he is relaxing during off-time and listening to music.

I will get my own NAS system up and running eventually but it's on the backburner as far as priorities go. For now I am working on getting my CD collection ripped which is taking a LONG time though I have things down for how I want to do it at this point. Everything goes to a desktop docking station with two 6TB drives which will eventually be moved to a NAS. I have cloud emergency backup and a clone drive, plus the hard copies to protect me from losing all my data.

For discovering new music, Tidal and Qobuz and in extremis Spotify (more extensive catalogue, poor SQ). If I like something enough to need a guarantee that the streamers will never be able to take it away from me at a moment's notice, I'll buy the physical CD or Flacs and rip or download accordingly.

YES YES YES!!! Couldn’t agree more. 

Mick.

All of this, precisely! I use a different ripping and playback, but the method is 100%. I’ve come to the conclusion that, dollar for dollar, a streamer outperforms a CD player. We live in a golden age of music reproduction. Sitting hear listening to anything I fancy from a streamer and DAC into a Solo ULDE and Focal Utopia headphones. Bloody hell. This ain’t my dad’s hifi.

Mick.

   My digital is headphones only and away from my speaker system, which is the Accession MC directly driving the Proprius. Also a terrific pair!

Mick.

What are you using for your digital system?

I use Audiolab 8300cd player, I find it a bit on the bright side for my headphone listening but not so much with my speakers so I have ordered CuSat50 cables to sort this issue out, I am using Lautus cables from my Amp to the Solo but I got these to improve the Bass which they did do and they also helped to  smooth the treble out a bit too but at mid to high volume it still is a bit harsh mainly with headphones listening. With vinyl it is a bit better but not great, But I put this down to the cart Ortofon 2M bronze I'm using but I don't want to replace it as over all I'm happy with it.

I do tend to listen more to CDs at night but that is more to do with me falling to sleep while listening, We all know that wouldn't be good for the cart it left for hrs on end playing at the end of a album side.

To me CDs still have a place in audio and I think they will be around for a long time yet

I'm with you there, Rich, I wonder if the charm of streaming from the internet will wear off for some and help to fuel sales of physical media in the way that some have returned to vinyl from CD?

I buy new music on LP if I can, and if it comes with a CD, all the better. If it has a download code, that's good, either the CD or the download ends up on my streamer very quickly. If no LP, I'll buy a CD, and of course I pick up both second-hand in charity shops when they're open. My CD collection is ripped to flac, and I do tend to listen via the streamer for convenience when doing something else and not just sitting listening. But for me streaming is an added layer of flexibility, not 'instead of' anything. The CDs are still in use in a second (CD and radio only) system upstairs, and so the booklets etc are available, and some of the digital files also end up on a portable player for when I'm gardening or doing maintenance.

I also buy a few downloads, provided flac files are available (or wav from which I can make them). I won't pay for mp3s. The downloads I buy are often releases by overseas bands selling their music on Bandcamp, where there is no UK distribution, and the carriage costs can easily equal or exceed the cost of an LP.

I don't stream from the internet, but if I were to be reliant on it, the thing which would concern me most would be continued availability, or rather lack of. Has anyone considered what would effectively be censorship, if streaming sites felt obliged to remove artists' work as a result of lobbying by the latest crop of cancel-culturist zealots? I don't know if anyone actually has ever been quietly removed from a streaming site, but I heard a tediously 'improving' discussion on BBC R3 last week, around whether or not we should be listening to the recordings of James Levine.

Like Jon, who began this thread (and others), I like to own my music.

We all know streaming sites can remove bands or tracks from their site at will but what you said about censorship was interesting. you could have one label saying your not having our music if you play music from one of our rivals and because the are big with a lot of big names that site may feel like giving into them because they couldn't afford to lose them, that's just one case I can think of at the moment there are probably a LOT more

   My digital set up is Zen Mk3 playing from locally stored files, CD rips and streaming from Tidal, into a DAC and onto the Solo ULDE which drives Focal headphones. Many hours of joy at the times I can’t spin vinyl.

Mick.

Nice system, Does it play CDs or is it just to rip them to it. I see it plays Internet Radio, this is something I have not really looked into, is it any good?I wouldn't know where to start, could I do it on just a computer. I remember reading about it but that was a long time ago and back then I had a DAB radio in my system and thought that internet radio was a hassle, you don't hear about it much but is that  because there is no demand for it I really don't know. I would of thought if the demand was there a lot more HiFi brands would be doing it

Absolutely, another good point there, Jon.

Good condition 2nd hand vinyl is becoming more difficult to find and there's a lot of music which has never made it onto vinyl.

There are CD's and Cd's ......billions @4 for £1...at many charity shop....but few of ' re-mastered' 20bit and few of 'Original recording'. The ' sound' can be ' night and day'.

Then there are CD players ....to extract the 16 bit .....I have opted to a dedicated Transport and 'Philips Mech Top loader'. It is also ' night and day ''' to a front light plastic tray with a plastic ex computer drive.

But had a 32 bit Digital to Analogue Converter .....that can re process the sound, up-scale and reconfigure the missing '' bit's'' and mine allows you 11 different tone .....from ''natural''   '' acoustic'' or another other you fancy even changing the very aura of the original recording.

Then Vinyl allowed HMC do resurrect from death with £20 a go .....digital Vinyl plastic .....the 24 bit digital Recording is pressed to a Vinyl via a digital lathe ......take your pick ..CD for £.25 pence in aplastic box or CD quality in £20. cardboard envelope with a photo and RIAA equalisation added to give a Vinyl as we used to know, Flavour.

Money money money it is the rich man world ...ha ha ha aha ....ABBA on CD or ......Money money money without the rich world men world @£20 HMV. Vinyl.

Both L*nn and Naim have their own internet radio channels. There may be more (I haven't really looked too hard). Where I live, FM and DAB reception isn't too good and having Internet radio available via my Raspberry Pi / Volumio / Bitzie (one of Ash's old ones) is really useful. This is straying off the original topic somewhat but what's new eh

You can make a computer do whatever you want once you have the know-how. It can be complex or simple. Pure data is formless and doesn't require much effort for preservation.

Interesting one - Classic FM Internet radio comes up as 128Kbps. Its station title shows as Classic FMMP3!

Hey Jon

   Only plays back after ripping. Each CD takes three to five minutes to rip. Playback is better than any CD transport I’ve owned. As for radio, I haven’t gone there yet, but I will. All of the stations I regularly use are available. 

Mick.

 We seemed to have veered off CD audio a bit, I was asking if CDs would be around in 30 years time but I do think what's being said is relevant to the discussion (debate) about CD audio. We all seem to have are favourite ways of playing music and that's good. I'm still not sure if CD will be about in 30 years time unless the RED BOOK thing is scrapped but does that mean we are all going to have to invest new hardware if so I think it would be a non starter unless it's backward compatible, BUT I'M THINKING SACD  the sound was better than CDs but it was not popular for some reason this may be have been down to cost , hardware or availability of SACDs (I'm not sure if it was backward compatible)  or all three. A mate of mine does streaming and said he uses it to find new music and when he finds something he likes he goes out and buys the album or downloads it.   

CD drives consist of many intricate parts, with plastic mouldings costing £10K - £100K each to tool-up for. Similarly, the metal parts. Who will make the laser assembly?

But I guess DVD will keep going a number of years, and so CDs can at least be ripped, but for 30 years, that's anybody's guess.

I know you can record onto CDs but you do need a computer were as cassettes it was more plug and record. Does anybody remember the slogan   Tape is killing Music (I think that's how it was said) funny you didn't get that with CD-Rs.

The future of music play back seems to be going the non physical side but there are still a lot of young that like collecting Vinyl all be it small in numbers, If you see what I mean. I know one teen that likes collecting vinyl but as no interest in the CD side, I know him as he's dad is a vary good friend of mine and his dad sent him to me for some advice on buying a record player as he didn't have anything to play his vinyl on (I was more than happy to do this) and he thought it was about time he got himself a turntable, He told me when he got it and set it up in his system that he was surprised how good it sounded. this seems to be the way, they like collecting vinyl but don't play them, to me this is a pity and don't see the point as music is for listening too ( there is going to be a lot of unused vinyl in the future) and they don't get the joy of playing vinyl.

discrete badger wrote: I suspect it'll become the same situation as for audio cassettes now, where almost every new player one can buy has the same cheap basic mechanism. I doubt the manufacturer's motivation for staying in that game is anything other than profit, so the model clearly works.

It's kind of already reached that point. Most CDPs have similar inexpensive mechanisms inside, whether the boombox type, the car/slot type, or the drawer type. Most of these come from a handful of OEMs.

If you take the hood off many CD players, you'll see the same types of mechanisms, though some do cover it with a branded metal plate to disguise this which you'll also have to remove to really look at the mechanism.

There are a few specialized, niche manufacturers making mechanisms but not in any great quantity.

The high end, commercial grade mechanism that Philips made for jukeboxes and such has already been discontinued. There is a stash of NOS that some companies use, but when they're gone they're gone.

There has been a very small scale cassette revival going for about ten years. One of the selling points for small labels and artists is that cassettes are much cheaper to manufacture compared to vinyl or glass mastered CDs. It's possible to get a run of 100 cassettes made with cases and full color artwork for around $300.

Young people into indie music don't really buy CDs for the most part but they will buy cassettes sometimes, even if they don't actually listen to them. These are often sold on sites like Bandcamp and come with a digital download.

The biggest problem with cassettes right now are the low quality of new playback equipment and the fact that only Type 1 tape is available new anymore. I do have some newer cassettes that sound surprisingly good but I'm playing them back on an old JVC tape deck from the 90s.

I was reading about small labels finding it cheaper to manufacture cassettes, on the internet a few weeks ago. Reading your post reminded me about it. I do know even big bands are  releasing their new albums on cassette but as you said it's finding new playback equipment of quality to play them on. Even if you buy a good quality old one the chances are it will need a good service and probably new belts and that's going to be expensive, That's why I think the revival of cassettes will not last. I can only speak about the UK as most think it will not last here, there is just not as big a market here as there is in the USA. But you are right about the young and CDs, It's the same here in the UK they don't seem to have much interest in them.

None of the repair shops in my area will work on cassette decks, or if they do, they charge obscene amounts of money for even basic servicing. When my last deck bit the dust, I had to get a friend to ship me a serviced deck from another state where he knows a guy that works on them. If I need any real repair work done, I would have to ship it out.

It will be interesting to see where things are at with tapes in another five years. I think the availability of decent decks has really started to dry up with the only real option being a used unit. 

I didn't know about this until recently, but a younger friend told me that Walkmans have really gotten out of control pricing wise and these are even tougher to find in working order and get repaired vs. a full size deck.

He tried 3 different eBay units that were supposed to be serviced and ready to go and pretty much all of them had problems.

I have no interest in getting back into or collecting cassettes because 1 sound quality 2 do not have the funds and 3 finding good play back cassette decks. money and time to me is better spent on my vinyl and CDs play back, collecting and most important listening.

I think this would be true for most people. The only reason I got back into tapes is because of certain artists that release music on the cassette format and nostalgia. That and I have a friend that has done some cassette releases. Not a practical format for most people though. Tapes only make up a tiny fraction of my collection overall. I have many more CDs and LPs.

I will have to dig it out, and see if it still works. I have no intention of going back down the compact cassette Route though.

CD, Vinyl and streaming are enough for me.

Is there anybody out there that can tell me how MUSIC LIBRARYS store their music, I do think I know the answer to this and it's going to be on vinyl and CDs mainly plus other old formats for stuff that is really old and can't be replaced and to keep the recordings as original as possible, That being said I would think that they would record old stuff to digital so it can be played (but what on?) I may be wrong.

Now I have heard about this and have checked some of my CDs for it and could not find any suffering from it, but I will admit to thinking it was a joke as when I first heard about it it was when CD had not long been out and at the time I thought how can they rot if the metal inside is covered plastic, I have also read that this was more to do with CD-Rs and CD-RWs.

Sound is too clinical and unrealistic

Analogue all the way 

Cassette in my opinion is the best format but love to play vinyl more

Likely to affect older discs.

I used CDParanoia to rip them, which is the Linux library behind many of the available GUIs such as Asunder. This is the Linux equivalent of EAC, but actually better, and is extremely good at "reviving" damaged CDs which have audible artefacts when played in real-time. If the damage is bad it takes advantage of the fact that it does not have to work in real-time and, when it encounters a problem area, goes very slowly and tries again and again to read it, something which a CD or DVD player cannot do because in those cases there is a deadline and failing to meet it would lead to an audio dropout. 

This gives a different twist on the notion of "reference" from an "archive" angle. A CD - especially a degraded one - played on a quasi-real-time CD transport, however expensive that transport is, cannot be "reference", because that transport can't do what a humble cheap laptop CD drive does at the hands of CDParanoia. However, a high-quality rip, stored on a hard drive and backed up, will never degrade in that way, so is arguably closer to "reference". 

Anyway, and somewhat ironically, in my case some discs were so heavily degraded that even CDParanoia gave up trying to read them. For the couple of tracks I wanted to use from those, I re-recorded the SP/DIF stream from a CD player which was - amazingly - able to produce a very good signal from such garbage data!

It is cycling's equivalent of thinking that a £10,000 bicycle is better than a £1500 bicycle. Price doesn't mean anything. Luxury is perception.

So you don’t think that the dedicated circuit to reduce noise is worth it?

Just remember how much this was going to cost with your original PC plan.

I'd not seen the term 'disc rot' before but a quick Google indicates that I'm not the only one to have lost music this way.  In my case it was three CDs out of about 200.  All of the ones that failed were purchased in the 80's from reputable shops and well looked after, spending most of their life in storage in a box under a bed in Yorkshire so had not been subjected to wild temperature variations.  One of them was Pat Metheny's 'American Garage' - I don't recall the other two but ECM is a fairly major label.  None of the discs showed any signs of surface damage.  I now keep my collection on three geographically separate USB drives, no more than two are together at any one time.  I then use rsync to transfer files to sd cards and a SSD for playback on a DAP and home system respectively.  The sheer practicalities of this arrangement outweighs any enjoyment I had in collecting CDs.

I don't dislike CDs, but

I have looked up this disc rot and now know that it is not a joke, I seem to be lucky so far as none of my CDs have suffered from this and yes I did check some of my older CDs today, It seems that most of this was CDs from the 80s but I could not find out where these CDs were manufacture from or weather it was a general thing

The PC does the rest. Most discs rip fine, but you can have issues with some of the copy protected discs.

I'm the same as you I don't have the know how too.

If you're happy with CDs then there is absolutely no reason to change.  I was simply having a problem with the media itself and the space it occupies. 

I used 'whipper' (a Linux alternative to EAC) to rip my CDs - both do the same job.  You definitely do not need an 'audiophile' CD drive for this, I used a reasonably cheap USB drive as reading is usually performed in several passes (*). Once ripped, Whipper/EAC will connect to the the MusicBrainz database and append track information.  The next step is the crucial one; EAC will generate a checksum for each track and compare this against an online database of rips for the same track.  This will report back the number of people who have reported the same checksum so you can be confident you have an accurate rip.

For playback, a Raspberry Pi connected to a USB drive served me well for years.  I live in a small apartment and have no need for a NAS.  I recently upgraded to a SOtM SMS200 but can't say that it's a huge step up in performance over the Pi.

(*) In order to calculate the checksum accurately in a manner that can be compared with others, you will need to 'calibrate' the drive to determine the offset.  This usually involves nothing more than dropping a popular CD into the drive and drinking some tea while EAC rips the disk with various offset values and uses tries to match them with values in the online database.  You will only need to do this once for each CD drive you use.

whipper - another one of the many faces of CDParanoia. 

Disc rot was not a widespread problem, at least in the grand scheme of things if we are talking about the entire world.

However, it did have a disproportionate effect in the UK, because discs that "bronzed" and "rotted" were specifically manufactured at the PDO UK plant during a specific time period (1988-93). For awhile these were being replaced by the manufacturer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc_bronzing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc_bronzing

Here in the U.S., very few PDO UK discs were sold. Most of the discs sold here were/are pressed in the U.S., Mexico, Japan, and other plants in Europe. Out of 4,000+ CDs I have just three or four CDs with disc rot.

I have learned to avoid PDO UK discs from that time frame, for the most part. Note that some of these discs may still be playable for now, but it's only a matter of time before the data on the disc gets corrupted. If you care about the music on them, I'd strongly advice backing them up ASAP with a good ripping program like EAC, dBpoweramp, etc.

Hans Beekhuyzen offers a general introduction to the subject on you tube. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0GbPNN7v8c - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0GbPNN7v8c

The video also explains the relationship between WAV and FLAC.  (I prefer FLAC)

There are also a few tutorials on EAC itself, such as the following;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkLCzfBa2gI - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkLCzfBa2gI

You don't need anything special for the drive if you're just using it for ripping.  Whatever drive you use, EAC will read chunks of data multiple times until it is satisfied that it is reading the same data.  Comparisons with the accuraterip data base at the end of the run can be used to verify the integrity of the rip.  I used a USB drive costing around 35 GBP and it worked fine. 

I hope the above helps get you started.

New Release Vinyl and am still in tone queue for my pre Order seek a 'asking price' of £25.00 and up to £40 for 180gm. For that I get a large VINLY with Card envelope and an 'Art work '' or a professional retouched Print/photo.

The RIAA equalisation of the Phono Pre amp tries to create a perception of true accoustic analogue sound but the Vinyl was recording trough a 20bit Recording microphone and Processers and cut to Vinyl with Digital lathe .....and the sound is digital clear, too clear and the Phono pre seeks to inject analogue warmth but for that you need to spend some £400-600 Pre Amp phono.

So we have Digital versus digital or DAC software app adjusting the sound to analogue or RIAA Phono amp.....

I like the natural cardboard envelope, i like to physically place it on the Thorens and adjusting it myself and the whole process adds and makes for better listening....

My hope is for a dedicated new breed of RIAA phono to convert those new recording studio and conversion to Vinyl but it is NOT Analogue produced and certainly you can make believe. BUT i have some Sarah Vaughn 180 gm Chestky true analogue recording and produced  ...AND that caused the difficulty when you return to CD replay ...NOT the same experience and CD has a difficulty with Mech and laser and other Management software. 

I found both videos informative and I have made a note of the one on how to use EAC. I have 2 laptops so I can watch the video on EAC on one while setting up the other laptop which is good for me as my memory is not all that clever.

As for the CD writer I have looked at one for £35 it's the same brand as the laptop I'm going to set EAC up on and as I'm only going to use it for CD ripping I don't see any point in spending more.

again thanks

I was an EAC user for years but switched to dBpoweramp. The latter program does the same thing but is easier to use and faster. It is not a free program, but considering the time I saved, it was worth every penny to me. And I have thousands of CDs to rip, so time is very important to me in addition to the accuracy of the results.

As far as the drive goes, I recommend not buying an expensive drive. The drive I use is an LG SATA DVD/CDRom drive that costs about $20. That goes into a Vantec Nextstar USB 3.0 SATA enclosure (around $40-50), which allows me to use a full size SATA drive that would normally go in a tower computer, which I don't have.

The enclosure is great because I can just replace the $20 drive when it burns out. IME any drive will eventually burn out from ripping a large amount of CDs.

The last you want to do is burn out an expensive Blu-Ray type drive or proprietary laptop type drive. Learned that the hard way.

As far as the format to rip to, I use FLAC 8. I wouldn't recommend anything else unless you are on a Mac or something and tethered to their ecosystem.

lfc jon wrote: Will be putting my order in for a CD DVD ROM drive this week, apart from storing my CD collection on the computer I will be putting some of them on my Hi Res portable but where is the best place to store the CDs I rip to my computer, Will any external hard drive do? As I don't wont to keep them just on the computer just in case, as I have had problems in the past and lost all my downloads.

What I personally do is store all my CD rips and digital music on a 6TB NAS grade HDD that goes in a docking station. That docking station has room for two drives, so I have two 6TB HDDs. One drive is the actual storage, while the other is simply a clone. Additionally, I have an unlimited emergency cloud backup system if both of the HDDs fail.

My advice would be to never rely on one drive, no matter if it's HDD, SSD, internal, or external. Any drive can and will fail eventually, so having a clone of your drive plus cloud backup is really the best way to go for long term data preservation.

Thanks all

I am just WARNING you lot as I may be asking for HELP later.

As some of you may know I'M NOT GOOD WITH COMPUTERS

That is good news Jon and I found ripping quickly goes from a new confusing thing to a reliable routine. I would endorse the multiple backups approach, I'd hate to lose my music collection or my photos.

Talking of trying new tech I'm trialling Roon at the moment, which others here have probably already got running well. I like reading the wiki lookups and extra metadata on my tablet and am considering phasing out my Squeezebox Touch , although it is still running in parallel for now.

When see all the constructive and helpful advice in this thread it reminds me why I like being in this forum with all of you. 

this is something I should of been doing some time ago but never got round to doing it, now I have no excuse (now I've spent the money) this is the push I need. I just hope it goes OK, I can also put some of my music on my Hi-res portable which will be good for when I'm out and about. Can't wait!!!