# Is it possible to build a worthwhile CD collection anymore? Re: CD-Rs and such



## ClassicalListener

I started collecting CDs back in 1992. I built a large collection over the years which has brought me immeasurable pleasure and well-being, however for the last eight years or so I have been occupied with other matters and have neglected both purchasing and listening to music. Now that I wish to resume my passion I have discovered with disgust that it has become very difficult to pursue.

It seems there is a prevalence now of very low quality releases for the same price that before used to buy you excellent pressings that were worth owning and preserving. Many CDs are now being offered as CD-Rs, which longevity is highly questionable, and which quality, from the material of the booklets, to the liner notes and the physical feel of the CDs themselves, feel cheap and disposable - the opposite of an item that might be worth collecting. The CDs I bought more than twenty years ago without exception play flawlessly today and I have no reason to doubt they won't continue to do so for many decades. Will that be the case with these CD-Rs?

Most worrisome, they have become very difficult to avoid. Many sellers including Amazon are dispatching CD-Rs without warning when you purchase ostensibly new and factory produced CDs, and there is no way to tell beforehand which are which. Other sellers will send you budget, cheaply produced, non-U.S. or European pressings which look and feel no better than a bootleg advertised as the real thing, and then refuse to address or correct the situation like just happened to me with Moviemars at Ebay. You can compare what I received with a proper Deutsche Grammophone CD:

http://i.imgur.com/ixgxCL1.jpg

So my question is, for those of you who have been actively building your collections during the last couple of years, is there an approach to buying CDs today to get around both CD-Rs and cheaply produced budget CDs being passed off as regular factory pressings?


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## brotagonist

I'd say, don't worry too much about it. Material objects are subject to wear. That's a fact of life. So far, in my experience, the CD-R phenomenon is very limited. They will likely last years, if not forever. If you have to replace a couple of albums over the years, out of the hundreds you have, well, that's a small price to pay for the enjoyment.


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## arpeggio

*I do not know*

I do not know.

I have been purchasing CD's since they were introduced. I am listening to the first CD I purchased and it still sounds OK to me.

I have over 2,000 CD's in my library and so far I have not had any problems. I know that there are many here whose collections are much larger that mine.

This does not mean that tomorrow half of my collection would not turn into Swiss cheese.

To my knowledge there are problems with every recording medium from vinyl to tape to CD's to downloads.


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## ClassicalListener

Well, I do care and enjoy building a collection, which is why I ask.

And yes, as the Buddha taught, all composite things fall apart - not at the same rate, however.


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## Figleaf

Sorry to be ignorant, but what is a CDR? I noticed that Marston are offering them in lieu of sold out CDs, but without liner notes. The noteless CDRs seem to cost the same as the original CD, which is a bit cheeky:

http://www.marstonrecords.com/html/order.htm

I had a break from collecting of a similar duration to the OP when my children were small. Collecting again now, I've mostly found it easy to fill in the gaps with used CDs. Those which are no longer available seem to have vanished off the face of the earth rather than been replaced with CDRs, which would be better! Marston is the only exception that I've noticed.


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## Art Rock

CDR.

I have found CDR's that I burned 10 years ago are still perfectly OK. I do burn on the lowest speed, which I think helps.


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## Kopachris

@Figleaf: A CD-R is a _recordable_ CD. Instead of stamping pits into a metallic substrate using some industrial process, as normal CDs are published, the CD-R is recorded using the laser in a consumer-grade CD writer like you'd find in your laptop.


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## bigshot

If you are down to stuff that's only available on CD-R, it sounds like you already have a pretty complete library. My advice would be to either sit down and enjoy the library you have, or start exploring new types of music you haven't considered before. "Completists" tend to have an awful lot of bad CDs in their collection. Better to spread the net further and just go for the gold.


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## Figleaf

Thank you for the explanations, Kopachris and Art Rock! I don't think I'd be happy to pay full price for a CDR, but it would be better than nothing if the recording was otherwise unobtainable.


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## JACE

ClassicalListener said:


> So my question is, for those of you who have been actively building your collections during the last couple of years, is there an approach to buying CDs today to get around both CD-Rs and cheaply produced budget CDs being passed off as regular factory pressings?


I don't like CD-Rs either. But getting them unexpectedly hasn't been an issue for me.

Use retailers with which you are familiar. Direct retailers like Amazon and ArkivMusic always state whether the items being sold are CD-Rs.

And if you're purchasing from a re-seller that you've not used before, ask them ahead of time if the disc is a CD-R. Also, I typically use re-sellers that I shop with regularly [imports cd; classical music superstore]. I never need to ask them whether a disc is a CD-R since they don't sell them.

BTW: I have a bunch of CD-Rs that I burned _myself_ -- nearly all of them from my local library. 

And they're all _fine_ -- even the old ones. But I wouldn't want to PAY for a CD-R -- unless it was otherwise unobtainable and I really, really wanted it.


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## Figleaf

From Marston's 'endangered list' of almost sold out CDs which will be replaced with CDRs once the last copy is sold:





















I have all these (on my second copy of the Renaud as my daughter once decided to skate around the floor on the first one) but if I didn't I'd be buying them now before it's too late. No, I don't work for Marston!


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## Kopachris

Honestly, I've never had a problem with CD-Rs versus CDs (coming from an age when this was the primary method of sharing music with friends). From a technical standpoint, the initial quality is exactly the same. The only issue is durability. While it's true that under certain conditions, a CD-R can be rendered unreadable after about 2 years, as long as you take some care with your discs, they'll last as long as you need them to.


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## ClassicalListener

JACE said:


> I don't like CD-Rs either. But getting them unexpectedly hasn't been an issue for me.
> 
> Use retailers with which you are familiar. Direct retailers like Amazon and ArkivMusic always state whether the items being sold are CD-Rs.
> 
> And if you're purchasing from a re-seller that you've not used before, ask them ahead of time if the disc is a CD-R. Also, I typically use re-sellers that I shop with regularly [imports cd; classical music superstore]. I never need to ask them whether a disc is a CD-R since they don't sell them.


The problem is that all retailers now simply sort orders automatically from anonymous suppliers and have no idea whatsoever what edition or pressing they are selling. Yesterday I tried contacting some six sellers about a CD on both Amazon and Ebay, and none was able to answer.

And there have been reports of even Amazon sending out CD-Rs without warning in place of legitimate factory pressings.

Regarding CD-Rs themselves, they are worth nothing and represent the biggest rip-off the industry has been able to concoct in its long, dubious history.


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## JACE

ClassicalListener said:


> The problem is that all retailers now simply sort orders automatically from anonymous suppliers and have no idea whatsoever what edition or pressing they are selling. Yesterday I tried contacting some six sellers about a CD on both Amazon and Ebay, and none was able to answer.
> 
> And there have been reports of even Amazon sending out CD-Rs without warning in place of legitimate factory pressings.


Hmm. This hasn't happened to me yet.

Maybe it will. Fingers crossed that it won't.


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## Guest

Not exactly on topic, but I am a scientist, and we frequently back up data onto CD-Rs, or now DVD-Rs for long term storage. Granted, those aren't going to be pulled out and used as often as a music CD, but still, I think the assumption is that they will last quite a while.

I understand some retailers sell CDRs of out of print albums, so they definitely have their uses. I don't personally have an objection to them, but I do think it is kind of shady to sell them for full price, especially if they don't have the same packaging as the original. Still, if there is no other way to obtain a recording, I suppose they can ask whatever they want.

The way I deal with it is that I mostly listen to my music in digital format. Most of my purchases are digital downloads. But when I buy a CD, or an LP, as I have been lately, I convert them to digital format and listen to them usually on my computer, iPod, or off a USB drive plugged into my car. I am rarely right around a CD player. And this way I have more at my disposal to listen to, and the originals are kept safe and sound and don't get a lot of play, so they take less wear and tear. And I don't have a stellar home stereo system, nor are my ears discerning enough to know that my digital format is inferior to the CD.


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## bigshot

Burned CDs cost MORE to manufacture, not less. The reason they use them is to avoid doing a whole replicating run when 90% of it will sit on the shelf for ten years.


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## Blue Miasma

Am I right in thinking that those discs in my collection that doesn't have the compact disc digital audio logo on the printed (top side) of the disc are CDR's ? Because if so then HMV Bond St & Amazon have some explaining to do and those CD's weren't cheap either but I honestly can't tell any difference in regards to sound quality but if they are CDR's they ain't the cheap ones used for laptops because those ones have a blue colour on the play side, in any case when I'm paying good money I want the real goods otherwise you might as well buy mp3's then rip to CDR's yourself for cheaper


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## KenOC

Blue Miasma said:


> ...in any case when I'm paying good money I want the real goods otherwise you might as well buy mp3's then rip to CDR's yourself for cheaper


Most commercial CD-Rs have the original CD contents, that is, lossless files rather than compressed MP3s. So it's not quite the same thing. They are produced in small volumes, manually, as noted just above, and are quite expensive to sell. My impression is that these are offered more as a service than anything else. However, if the product is a CD-R, that should certainly be noted clearly in the vendor's advertising.


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## ptr

Comparing a CD and CDR is pretty easy (a generalisation!).. 
A red-book CD is to 98% a silver disc with a clear lacquer on the back/playing side whilst most CDR's if You look at the playing side is tinted, mostly some form of blue tint (that can be from grayish pale blue to very blue and sometimes green, there are exeptions to this generalisation, like completely black or Gold disc but they are generally to expensive for "commercial" releases..)

Unfortunately I can't find any good pictures on the net to illustrate the differences (all I find is way to similar to be any good to show the difference, to much glare on the one's that show a CD)

/ptr.


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## KenOC

I believe CD-Rs have a tint, or color, resulting from the dye layer (different dyes are used, mostly blue and green). Here's a picture of an older CD-R that has lost part of its dye layer through degradation. No longer readable, of course.










A manufactured CD will normally be a uniform silver on the side opposite the label.


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## Mahlerian

Blue Miasma said:


> Am I right in thinking that those discs in my collection that doesn't have the compact disc digital audio logo on the printed (top side) of the disc are CDR's ? Because if so then HMV Bond St & Amazon have some explaining to do and those CD's weren't cheap either but I honestly can't tell any difference in regards to sound quality but if they are CDR's they ain't the cheap ones used for laptops because those ones have a blue colour on the play side, in any case when I'm paying good money I want the real goods otherwise you might as well buy mp3's then rip to CDR's yourself for cheaper


No, there are plenty of regular CDs that do not have the Compact Disc logo.


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## Vaneyes

I wouldn't buy CD-Rs under any circumstance. I don't trust them. I've read many users testimonies to the contrary, but I still choose not to buy them. ArkivMusic CD-Rs are the most common seen at Amazon. I've been able to see or access additional information from the sellers there, so I don't see why the OPie has run into issues for such. I've found the CD-R sellers to be upfront about their product. I would suggest to consumers that they read all the detail before clicking BUY.

The beauty of Amazon Marketplace is that it gives you a chance to buy used or pre-owned or previously-enjoyed product that you would seldom see in the brick 'n mortar stores that sold some used as well as new, or even the strictly used CD stores. Product that has been out-of-print for ages. Some of this product pricing is high due to supply and demand, or just stupidity on part of the seller. Thankfully, those experiences are in the minority. Also, pay close attention to the percentages regarding seller positive/negative reviews. I rarely buy anything from a seller that has under a 96% rating. Again, that's my choice.:tiphat:


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## KenOC

Vaneyes said:


> I wouldn't buy CD-Rs under any circumstance. I don't trust them.


I would certainly buy a CD-R if that was the only medium available for the music I wanted. But I would quickly back the files up on my hard drives. Once burned, twice shy...


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## Vaneyes

KenOC said:


> I would certainly buy a CD-R if that was the only medium available for the music I wanted. But I would quickly back the files up on my hard drives. Once burned, twice shy...


Each to his own. I would rather boycott them and hope that the entity owning the product, doesn't remain lazy forever, and eventually reissues a CD. Failing that, licenses the product to Brilliant Classics, so they can reissue a CD.


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## Triplets

If you are concerned about CD-r durability, burn them to a hard drive.


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## ClassicalListener

Triplets said:


> If you are concerned about CD-r durability, burn them to a hard drive.


That wouldn't be building a CD collection, but downloading the files via a physical medium.

I love listening to music but I also like collecting. If just listening was my only concern regardless of quality or anything else, I probably would not pay for my music. As it is, my entire setup is built around CDs, and I wouldn't enjoy being forced to listen to music another way.


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## SixFootScowl

ClassicalListener said:


> The problem is that all retailers now simply sort orders automatically from anonymous suppliers and have no idea whatsoever what edition or pressing they are selling. Yesterday I tried contacting some six sellers about a CD on both Amazon and Ebay, and none was able to answer.
> 
> And there have been reports of even Amazon sending out CD-Rs without warning in place of legitimate factory pressings.
> 
> Regarding CD-Rs themselves, they are worth nothing and represent the biggest rip-off the industry has been able to concoct in its long, dubious history.


I have seen, and once purchased, a CD from Amazon that had a statement about being produced on demand. Surely that was a CDR.


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## Triplets

ClassicalListener said:


> That wouldn't be building a CD collection, but downloading the files via a physical medium.
> 
> I love listening to music but I also like collecting. If just listening was my only concern regardless of quality or anything else, I probably would not pay for my music. As it is, my entire setup is built around CDs, and I wouldn't enjoy being forced to listen to music another way.


What I meant to convey was that you should have no fear buying CDs that are in fact CD Rs. I have many CD Rs that must be approaching 20 years old and they play fine. However if you have concerns about long term durability you should make your own back ups.


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## Triplets

I would much rather collect Physical Media as well. I have several thousand CDs and aa significant collection of Blu Rays , SACDs and DVD-A. I also got back into vinyl a few years ago and and bought many lps, but now I am looking to sell them off along with my tt and Phone Pre Amp (but that would be a subject for another post).
CD sales are a fraction of what they were 5 years ago. I can't find a store in Chicago that sells new Classical CDs in any volume so now the browsing experience is a virtual one. In addition I am in my late 50s andthe wife and I have been discussing where we would like to retire. I know that I won't have room for the bulk of my collection when I have to downsize and am reluctantly starting to move some of it to a hard drive.
It is getting increasingly hard to find CD Players any more. Most audio companies have moved on to making streamers, DACs, etc. 
The good news is that CD-Rs and Hard Drives sound better than the original CDs. CD players have to read the disc while it spins and then convert digital to analogue. This makes them prone to timing errors, or jitter, which compromises sound quality. CD recorders or hard drives used in making CD Rs store the music in a buffer and don't have to extract the data from a moving disc. I noticed the improvement in sound on CD Rs twenty years ago when my entire system was modest and actually substituted some CD Rs for the original CD in some jewell boxes. The highest quality CD players that are out there now essentially place some of the music in a buffer and do multiple reads for error correction before sending it onto the DAC
portion of the player and achieve the same advantages.
The liner notes that accompany CD Rs are variable. Some companies, such as Arkivmusik, will make a black and white copy of the original notes and distribute that. Others do less. In truth I rarely read the notes on a CD because damned if I can make out the small font size anyway. The notes on lps were a clear advantage to the notes on CDs. When I really want to read up on an unfamiliar work or composer I usually go on line.


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## Kopachris

Triplets said:


> The good news is that CD-Rs and Hard Drives sound better than the original CDs. CD players have to read the disc while it spins and then convert digital to analogue. This makes them prone to timing errors, or jitter, which compromises sound quality. CD recorders or hard drives used in making CD Rs store the music in a buffer and don't have to extract the data from a moving disc.


All CD drives that are in computers do this with every disc, whether CD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, Blu-Ray... There is no difference in audio quality between a CD played on a computer and a CD-R played on the same computer because the binary data read by the drive is exactly the same.


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## Kopachris

Might be interesting to note that I just found at the bottom of my sock drawer a CD-R I made at least 10 years ago. It's dirty, worn, scratched, and has basically seen much better days. Still plays just fine (except where it's actually scratched pretty deep). Upon close inspection, I can see there has been no fading of the dye in which the data is recorded. There has been no loss of quality.


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## Triplets

Kopachris said:


> All CD drives that are in computers do this with every disc, whether CD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, Blu-Ray... There is no difference in audio quality between a CD played on a computer and a CD-R played on the same computer because the binary data read by the drive is exactly the same.


Yes, but there are less errors in CD Rs than in regular CDs.. I refer you to the current issue of the Canadian Audiophile magazine Ultra High Fidelity, page 30:

"...Though we often think of the Compact Disc as a purely digital format, storing only the binary values of 1's and 0's, it does not in fact have the capacity to store such dense data in digital form. Thus, it in fact is an analog medium.
The length of a "land" (a "pit seen from the other side of the disc) is proportional to the number of 0's before a 1 is encountered, or vice versa. That length is an analog value, and therefore subject to evaluation. Because the edges of the "lands" are sloped and not absolutely straight, especially in a pressed disc, the data is subject to timing ambiguity. The result...is jitter.
To make the task even more difficult, a CD player must do it's reading and decoding in real time, getting the data off the disc and decoding it instantly so yaou can listen as it plays...
Is a hard drive better? Potentially it is, because it stores the actual binary data without the need to interpret it's values...computer playback software loads chunks of data into memory, so that the data is actually played from solid state circuitry, without moving parts, without the need to interpret the data, and without the vibration and other contamination from mechanical drive...Modern "ripping software" includes error checking. The ripped file on the hard drive is compared with that on the source disc, so that corrections can be made."

end of quotation


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## KenOC

Kopachris said:


> Might be interesting to note that I just found at the bottom of my sock drawer a CD-R I made at least 10 years ago. It's dirty, worn, scratched, and has basically seen much better days. Still plays just fine (except where it's actually scratched pretty deep). Upon close inspection, I can see there has been no fading of the dye in which the data is recorded. There has been no loss of quality.


I suspect the fading is mostly from light (Wiki mentions this too). This has been a huge problem with dye-based inkjet printer inks, with the makers advertising longer and longer print lives as they try to reformulate their inks. The prints from my first large-bed printer faded badly in only one or two years.Unfortunately, to get the newer inks you have to buy a newer printer!

Anyway, I store my CD-Rs on a shelf in a closet, door closed. The bottom of a sock drawer sounds fine too!


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## Ukko

This thread title hasn't been up long, but it must have a high Annoyance Quotient.

If you have the funds, and the environmentally useful storage room, and the appreciation, yes. They'll keep longer than you will.


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## OlivierM

I have over 3000 cds, and they are nearly all converted to flac now.
I just buy cds, I don't buy digital versions online.
The cds stay on the shelves, untouched, not risking much.
If they are cd-r's and they become flawed, I'll just burn a new one with my computer.

I have bought a good soundcard for my pc, with an integrated 24/192 DAC, I change the hard drives that contain the copies every two years. It's connected to my amplifier, and I really can't tell the difference between what comes out of the CD player and the PC.
The main advantage is the absolute easiness to browse the collection on the pc.
The main drawback is that the booklet is on the shelf.


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## Couac Addict

My cd-r discs are in pretty bad shape and haven't aged well. Some had the blue layer peel off :lol:


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## Badinerie

CD-R!? No thanks...arent they what we used to refer to as Pirate copies? If a CD retailer sent me one when I ordered a legitimate CD I would be extremely annoyed and would tell them what I thought of them.


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## ptr

You know, I buy quite a lot of CD's and my informed guesstimation is that it's about 1 in every 1000 that has been an CD-r that the seller/label not have noted in their information what form of disc it is. I've bought maybe two dozen OOP discs as CD-r's from "ArkivMusik" (with licence to do so) and all of then have been perfect (when I have ripped them to my hard drive).

As have been pointed out already, if You treat Your discs with respect and don't use them as coasters (apply to any silver disc) they will not deteriorate, I have CD-r's from way back like 1998 (Green Dye Fuji's) and they work fine. The only CD-r's I've had fail on me was from a bunch of BudgetBudget discs I bought ca, 2002, they had a grayish dye and was almost see through, I've replaced all of them with brand name discs! (Mostly use them to archive Air-checks)

/ptr


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## Morimur

CD-R's aren't for long-term storage. If an original recording isn't available, don't substitute it with a CD-R, it's not worth it.


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## OlivierM

Badinerie said:


> CD-R!? No thanks...arent they what we used to refer to as Pirate copies? If a CD retailer sent me one when I ordered a legitimate CD I would be extremely annoyed and would tell them what I thought of them.


I was told about 10 years ago that very small editions are bunt to cdrs, because of costs (basically, less than 2000 copies).

CDRs oxydize, so never put your fingers on the burnt surface. No scratches, as there is no protecting varnish.
If you aren't lucky, a cdr might get destroyed, even if respecting these rules. But... 
Nowadays, it's very easy to invest in a computer and put your discs on it.
A pc with good storage will cost about 800€, a good sound card, an external dac or a network player will cost around 300€.
So for half the price of what "specialists" magazines call "a medium-level cd player", you have an absolutely perfect cd player, with a fully digital chain, with the possibility to broadcast your music in the whole house.
I have a small Denon Ceol in my bedroom, to listen to music while reading in bed, directly connected to the computer through the network.
When I travel, I choose a few albums and transfer them to my phone.
I love cds (I wouldn't pay for bytes anyway) but digital solutions really enhance the possibilities. A single 64 gb micro sd card in a smartphone, and good headphones, and you have a high-end flac player with 160 albums to go.
If you visit a friend who has a bluetooth equipped hifi, you can directly stream the music from your phone. Or you can just use it in your car, as a music player.

I'm not a modernism extremist, far from it, but nowadays' technology offers really good audiophile solutions, that don't cost an arm and a leg. I enjoy having cds, I buy a lot. But I haven't used my cd player since I've made blind tests (pc/cd player rendition).


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## Chordalrock

OlivierM said:


> I was told about 10 years ago that very small editions are bunt to cdrs, because of costs (basically, less than 2000 copies).


2000 sounds like an awful lot for a classical music album. I can't find statistics now but from what I recall I'd imagine a couple hundred sales during the first year would be considered good for a classical album. Yet I've seen CD-R's used only once or twice, and the reason could have been a fishy online seller rather than the record company itself.

I don't think any self-respecting record company would use CD-R's, as the dyes decay over time and you'd probably be lucky to have the disc working at all after mere two decades. I've had CD-R's stop working after a few years and I have been averse to the medium ever since. The mere sight of them annoys me. When I buy music, I'm not buying a license to use it for a limited period of time, I'm buying something I expect to last for as long as I do without hassle.

Even if I thought some amount of hassle were acceptable for the price, classical music recordings become unavailable so often that if I buy something, I do need it to last, because if it becomes unusable, I may not be able to replace it.

I may also not listen to it very often so it has to be something that lasts for several decades with 99% certainty to justify buying it at all in many cases.

A printed CD is typically a much better way to store music than computer hard drives, where data can get silently corrupted if you use it at all and you'll never be the wiser until you use it again. At minimum you'd need a backup drive that you never use except for backing up your music, but even then the magnetism decays over time so you'd need to re-copy all the tons of files every five years just to be sure - with the potential to introduce new data corruption while doing it and having to check the integrity of the files somehow (and how are you going to do that without a 100% reliable point of comparison like a printed CD?). It's a hassle not justified by the context, which is that high quality printed CD's are easy and cheap to produce and distribute.


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## Figleaf

Chordalrock said:


> When I buy music, I'm not buying a license to use it for a limited period of time, I'm buying something I expect to last for as long as I do without hassle.


You hit the nail on the head there! Built in obsolescence is a bête noire of mine and always has been. I believe shellac has been shown to be the only totally stable medium for storing sound- but that's a fat lot of good for most listeners. I have my worries (well founded or otherwise) about the longevity of my CDs, but from what I've read on here, CDRs don't have a remotely acceptable shelf life, unless you possess a Tutankhamun's tomb of a sock drawer from which ancient artifacts emerge miraculously unscathed!


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## Guest

So it seems that the complaints about CDs and CD-Rs is pretty much the same complaint that has always existed regarding musical media - longevity. Older LPs also had problems - they could be easily scratched, dropped, warped. Cassettes were distorted over time. I missed the whole 8-track phase, so I can't address that. Essentially, the issue is how to get the best long term media storage. There is never going to be a perfect one. Even storing on a computer has its problems - what if it crashes, or something else happens.

If you can only get a CD on a CD-R, and you want it - get it. Then store it immediately on your computer so you always have that "permanent" backup. Don't use a lossy format for converting - use one of the lossless formats, like FLAC. Some websites, like eClassical, now actually offer digital downloads in the FLAC format. They offer it in 16-bit FLAC, which is supposed to be CD quality, or, if you want better, you can pay a little more and get 24-bit FLAC, which is supposed to be studio quality. I opt for the MP3 320 kbit/s quality, as my ears can't tell the difference, and they don't suck up so much space. I am told that a 24-bit FLAC album can be as large as 1GB.

At any rate, your music is then stored on a hard drive, and will be much safer. If your original is damaged or destroyed, you can then make your own replacement.


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## Figleaf

Dr Mike, you were lucky if your cassettes merely distorted over time! My favourites mostly got gobbled up by cassette players and spat out with the actual tape ripped and twisted. Easy recordability was the only advantage of tapes as a format- otherwise they were just what us kids were fobbed off with in the 80s, while LPs were for grownups! Way to encourage a love of music in the young!


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## bigshot

You need to clean the pinch roller, Figleaf. The rubber gets coated with oxide and slips and eats the tape. A little 50-50 rubbing alcohol water mix will fix that.


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## bigshot

Chordalrock said:


> 2000 sounds like an awful lot for a classical music album.


2000 is pretty much a minimum run for replicated disks. If they don't sell right away, they need to be stored until they do (read additional expense). You can see why so much goes out of print and MOD looks so attractive.


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## Figleaf

bigshot said:


> You need to clean the pinch roller, Figleaf. The rubber gets coated with oxide and slips and eats the tape. A little 50-50 rubbing alcohol water mix will fix that.


Now you tell me! 

Seriously though- I am in awe of how much you know about sound reproduction in all formats and eras. Thank you for your insights.


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## Chordalrock

bigshot said:


> 2000 is pretty much a minimum run for replicated disks.


Based on what sources?

If you sell an album for 18 euros like Orf, I'm pretty sure you can print a lot smaller run than 2000 and not lose money if you manage to sell most of it. Pretty sure.


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## bigshot

Actually I just checked. A replicated CD in a jewel case with printed face and inserts and shrink wrap is $785 for 500 and $900 for 1000. 2000 is $1700. A thousand is the point where the cost starts getting into the ballpark, not 2000. There would also be design costs for the packaging and the cost of the UPC code that would have to be amortized too. Manufacturing budget for 1000 would probably be well under $1.50 a disk. 2000 might be just a little over a dollar. But 500 would cost nearly $2.50 a disk. That is just manufacturing costs, not the costs of distribution, shipping. licensing, royalties, etc. (These numbers are ballpark of course.)

discmakers.com


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## bigshot

Figleaf said:


> Seriously though- I am in awe of how much you know about sound reproduction in all formats and eras.


I like to try everything and see how it works. There's music in every format that never made the jump to the next one. If you love music, you have to also be a little bit of a technology historian too!


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## Chordalrock

bigshot said:


> Actually I just checked. A replicated CD in a jewel case with printed face and inserts and shrink wrap is $785 for 500 and $900 for 1000. 2000 is $1700. A thousand is the point where the cost starts getting into the ballpark, not 2000. There would also be design costs for the packaging and the cost of the UPC code that would have to be amortized too. Manufacturing budget for 1000 would probably be well under $1.50 a disk. 2000 might be just a little over a dollar. But 500 would cost nearly $2.50 a disk. That is just manufacturing costs, not the costs of distribution, shipping. licensing, royalties, etc. (These numbers are ballpark of course.)
> 
> discmakers.com


Shipping and storage costs may well mean that many classical music albums are printed in smaller runs than 1000. If these weren't counted, then indeed a run of 1000 copies would make sense as the minimum size...


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## starthrower

Don't rely on Amazon to find out whether a title is in or out of print. Many of there CD-R versions (a rip off, imo) can be found at other sites as professionally manufactured discs. Importcds.com is a good source.


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## Radames

DrMike said:


> Not exactly on topic, but I am a scientist, and we frequently back up data onto CD-Rs, or now DVD-Rs for long term storage. Granted, those aren't going to be pulled out and used as often as a music CD, but still, I think the assumption is that they will last quite a while.


Me too. I have assumed they last as long as any CD. I have never checked old data though.

I have never bought an amazon CD and gotten a CDR. I usually buy my CDs at used CD shops now. I like browsing and picking up things that look interesting.


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## bigshot

Chordalrock said:


> Shipping and storage costs may well mean that many classical music albums are printed in smaller runs than 1000. If these weren't counted, then indeed a run of 1000 copies would make sense as the minimum size...


I would think that if a label didn't expect to sell more than a thousand, they wouldn't bother releasing it.


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## Chordalrock

bigshot said:


> I would think that if a label didn't expect to sell more than a thousand, they wouldn't bother releasing it.


I know of novels that had a print-run of only 500 copies (sometimes even less). These people do it because they love what they publish and want it to be available, even if only to a small group of fellow enthusiasts. I don't imagine some of the indie classical music record labels are any different.

500 people listening to a work of music isn't that few either, except by contemporary standards. How many people do you think heard Dufay or Ockeghem masses in the 15th century?


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## bigshot

Novels printed in runs of 500 would certainly printed digitally, which is the equivalent of MOD with CD-Rs. I was talking about replicated disks, which would be like printing a novel offset.

I'm not talking about the value of the work or whether things with small amounts of interest should or shouldn't be released. I am talking about the practicalities of manufacturing... a manufactured copy vs a digitally replicated copy.


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## Chordalrock

The Scarlet Fig by Avram Davidson. "Limited to 550 invidually numbered copies." Published in 2005 by The Rose Press.

Just one example. There are many others. You don't seem to know what you're talking about. It seems you believe everyone is a business man inside and no one is thinking about any other values than money.

edit: what are we even arguing about at this point? You have admitted the only reason why someone wouldn't release a print-run of less than 1000 copies is they wouldn't be making enough money or enough of a cultural impact. That's just rubbish. Nothing that you have written indicates that printed CD's would be too expensive to print in smaller numbers. Printing five hundred books would cost a lot more than printing five hundred CD's. What are you talking about?


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## bigshot

Five bucks says The Fig was printed digitally on laser printers. The same way as low run CDs are printed on CD-Rs. I do know what I am talking about. I have published a book with 500 copies digitally, and at one point I had a CD company that sold MOD CD-Rs.

Reference...

http://www.bookmarket.com/101print.htm
http://www.discmakers.com

Long run vs Short run vs Print on Demand.
Replicated vs mass duplicated on CD-R vs duplication on CD-R one at a time as they are ordered.


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## Chordalrock

I don't care if it was printed digitally or not. It's still more expensive than printing CD's.


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## bigshot

It's much more expensive per unit than printing with traditional offset, but it doesn't require large print runs. That is the point I am making.

Offset = Replicated Real CDs
Digital Printing = Burned CDs on CD-R

When you need to do a short run, you don't print offset/replicated CDs. You do Digital/CD-R. If you are going to print a book or CD traditionally, the costs of production require that you do runs in the thousands, not in the hundreds.


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## SixFootScowl

whoops, wrong thread. Bye.


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## Chordalrock

bigshot said:


> It's much more expensive per unit than printing with traditional offset, but it doesn't require large print runs. That is the point I am making.
> 
> Offset = Replicated Real CDs
> Digital Printing = Burned CDs on CD-R
> 
> When you need to do a short run, you don't print offset/replicated CDs. You do Digital/CD-R. If you are going to print a book or CD traditionally, the costs of production require that you do runs in the thousands, not in the hundreds.


That's a lot of claims, no math. I can do it too:

When you need to do a quality run, you don't do CD-R, you do printed CDs.

See?

The only thing that matters here is how much you sell it for, how many copies you sell, how much you pay for shipping and storage, and how much you pay for the print run. It doesn't matter what kind of analogies you can come up with.

You have already backpedalled from 2000 as the min size to 1000. You based this on nothing but a comparison of print-run prices, i.e. you ignored every other variable in the calculation. You think this constitutes a valid argument? Funny.


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## KenOC

I believe bigshot is quite right here. All the laws of economics, as well as my years of experience in manufacturing environments, tell me so. A bit of reading on variable costs versus fixed costs may be illuminating.


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## Chordalrock

KenOC said:


> I believe bigshot is quite right here. All the laws of economics, as well as my years of experience in manufacturing environments, tell me so. A bit of reading on variable costs versus fixed costs may be illuminating.


You're kidding, right?


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## bigshot

If the economics don't make sense to produce a replicated CD (specifically that there isn't enough demand to justify a pressing run to manufacture products to sell at a competitive price), then either they turn to MOD (Manufacture on Demand with burned disks) in a small print run, or they just say to heck with it and don't press it at all.

By the time you add in costs of distribution, advertising, overhead, etc, it just doesn't make sense to manufacture replicated disks unless you pretty much expect to be able to sell them in the thousands. Not hard to understand. Simple economics of scale.

Warner Bros does an excellent business in low manufacturing run burned DVDs with the Archive program. They release a lot of movies on DVD-R that would never see the light of day if they had to do a full replicated run on them.


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## Chordalrock

You are clearly incapable of constructing an argument that doesn't merely appeal to authority (your own). I am out.


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## bigshot

Buh bye! See ya later, alligator!


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