I will occasionally buy a CD, if that's all that's available. Typically, I buy vinyl and the new stuff almost always has a digital download code which I'll load onto my computer and phone to play in the car. Mostly I listen to vinyl. I find it to make listening more of an event. My wife and I will crack a bottle of wine, or pour some whisk(e)y, and spend a couple of hours spinning records. Does it sound better than other formats? Not necessarily, but the sleeves are art. The large format almost encourages you to delve in and learn more about the music.

MS Word was launched in 1983, so yes digital downloads will still probably be playing 30 years out. The question is will anyone care to listen.

Happy Sunsets!

Pongo wrote:

CDs will be playable forever. I recently came across a couple I bought back in 1992 or so, and they (obviously) still work perfectly.

In twenty, forty, two hundred years time will today's file formats still work?

CDs will absolutely not work forever. Use and heat will cause them to go. Never using them and keeping them cool will last.

Your file formats will work in 40 years. But that won't matter. You will have uploaded to the cloud by then and stream exclusively and your copy will have been replaced.by a copy that, Google for example, has decided to play. Google does this.currently and that works out really well.

I do not want to own anything (books, music, movies) that is not in digital form now. These days I want to be free of physical possessions as much as possible.

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

Pongo wrote:

CDs will be playable forever. I recently came across a couple I bought back in 1992 or so, and they (obviously) still work perfectly.

Well, I remember years ago they were guessing CD's wouldn't last more than 20-30 years. Air can get between the outer plastic layers and corrode the pits. But the biggest worry is probably no one will be making CD players. But that might not be for a while. It was only within what, the last 5 years, that the last commercial VCR rolled off the assembly line.

In twenty, forty, two hundred years time will today's file formats still work?

Yes, why wouldn't they? You only need software to read them as long as the songs get transferred to whatever the storage media of the day is.

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

So, not biodegradable? Landfill operation continued.

Happy Sunsets!

Most new cars no longer offer the option of a CD player.
I just bought a new car, 2018 Honda Civic EX-T and despite coming with a premium 450 watt, 10 speaker sound system......no CD player. This initially was very disconcerting to me, having a very large collection of CD's and being old, stubborn, techno challenged and not caring for the highly compressed digital sound people who do not know better accept from their phones and other digital devices. The answer to my problems was learning to rip my CD's to my home computer and then transferring the files to flash drives that can play through the ports on my new car sound system. Regarding the decrease in sound quality issue, I did some research and found that if a ripped the CD's onto my PC using a "lossless" format. In my case I chose WMA (Windows Media Audio) Lossless
which yields sound quality just about to the same level as the original CD. There are other "lossless" formats, I chose WMA Lossless because I knew that my Honda audio system would recognize it. So, in this case, a vacuum tube loving set in his ways old dog was actually able to learn a new trick.

More discussion on this topic:

https://surfguitar101.com/forums/topic/29007/

Karol Katcher just brought home a new 2018 Toy-motor Camry Sport. It too did not include a CD player. Now, had she stepped up another $1200 for the "premium sound system," she would have been "rewarded" with a single disk player. Figure that one out. Needless to say she has concerns (and so do I) about having to load all her fave music into her iPhone and have it continuously steaming to her car's system and dealing with all the file handling/trying to drive the damn car at the same time challenges.............. Accident waiting to happen. Literally.

I dig both my vehicle's 6 disk players and I'm going to keep them going until, well..........you get the idea.

I gave myself a pro disk copier several years back so having a plan B for "maintaining" the disks themselves is no problem-o.

evil ed

Traditional........speak softly and play through a big blonde amp. Did I mention that I still like big blonde amps?

Ed, Karol would have an alternate work around if the genius at Apple hadn't killed the iPod years ago. She could have burned her CD collection to iTunes, transfered them to the iPod an play the iPod in the Toyota Entune system through the USB port. BTW not only did Apple discontinue the iPod they no longer support the product or even offer parts and service. Appel is well known for superior customer service, so this is amazing.

Happy Sunsets!

Last edited: Mar 01, 2018 12:42:54