Many are predicting CDs will soon disappear, but few seem to be very emotional about it. In contrast, when vinyl started disappearing in the 80s there tended to be a lot of collector and “alternative” types who loudly lamented the (seeming) death of vinyl. And vinyl, and especially 45s, had a lot of obsessive collectors. Why don’t CDs seem to have the “cool” factor that vinyl had then and now? Will CD start being seen as “cool” when new releases are a lot harder to find?
Supposedly vinyl is a “warmer” sound, or something like that. I can relate since that was my first reaction to CD’s. They sounded cold and metalic. However I think that once you go to higher sampling rates and bit depths (???) like DVD audio, that goes away.
I’m not an audiophile so I don’t really know shit about this stuff.
One thing I do remember is that before CD’s people were forever bitching about dynamic range compression. So what was the first thing they slapped on CD players when they came out? Something to normalize the playback volume - forget what it’s called.
Nobody’s ever fuckin’ happy.
Handling and playing vinyl albums is a superior (well, sort of) sensory experience compared to putting a CD in a player. Vinyl album art and notes are larger and more impressive.
Also, nostalgia for older technology takes time to build. Maybe CDs will get there someday (some people actually miss 8-track tapes).
All the good music was originally released on vinyl.
Vinyl was awesome because of the artwork.
When I was a teen, it wasn’t uncommon for kids my age to adorn their bedroom walls with various album covers. Which I personally believe is a source for a lion’s share of the sentiment.
You’ll never get that with CDs.
Just like we never got that with cassette tapes when they became extinct.
I think this is mostly true with earlier CDs. I have a recording of the musical “On Your Toes” that I got in the mid- to late-80s. The sound of the cymbals makes it virtually unlistenable. And the brass instruments have a sort of tin-foil sound. I don’t hear these problems with later recordings.
I’m wondering whether the thickness of the CD is a factor. The older disks in my collection feel thicker and less pliable than the newer ones.
The content of a CD, being digital, is medium-independent. Without arguing about the sound being ‘better’ or ‘worse’, an analog delivery system is going to have a unique sound. A CD is going to sound exactly like any other digital medium carrying the same 1s and 0s.
I have a bit of nostalgia for CDs, because they showed up in my youth and enabled me to listen to high quality recordings in a transportable form (there was a turntable in the living room, but I just had a cassette player, and then CD player in my bedroom), but I don’t yearn for the sound of CDs . . . I can listen to CD quality audio without the compact disc.
Vinyl was around a lot longer than the CD - a good hundred years or so.
Some of us old farts aren’t going to get sentimental for CDs because we still haven’t gotten over being sentimental for vinyl.
CDs are so much less trouble to take good care of the media.
I don’t have iTunes, and no plans for ever installing it, so I will miss CDs for sure.
But having said that, I haven’t bought a CD in ages because I really don’t care about music all that much.
I was swimming in the toys it took to make music sound good from vinyl. When CD’s came out I couldn’t run fast enough away from vinyl. No more cleaning the disk like it was the Ark of the Covenant. No more installing the “good” needle on the record player and checking the platter speed with the strobe. No more cleaning the tape heads on the cassette recorder or reel to reel. No more adjusting the bias on the cassette recorder for the various types of tape used. No more queing up the cassette to the right spot to record and then setting the needle to just before the previous song stopped.
I was just about to purchase a sound compression system for noise reduction when I saw the wondrous CD format demonstrated. I think I paid $600 just for my CD player. I still have it.
And remember virgin vinyl? I got a set of Telefunken albums of Bach organ works. The needle hit the disk the first time - silence. God it was so beautiful. Then with CD’s you got that every…single…time.
I think those activities are exactly what attract vinyl users.
I doubt it. I think the older discs were likely over-engineered in the materials area, or perhaps they switched to a stronger plastic that didn’t require them to be quite so thick. That’s assuming there is a difference. I personally would not be surprised. Things change as experience is gained.
Early on, there was a period in which the engineers had to learn how to master for CDs. If they did the same thing as they did with vinyl, it came out harsh and unpleasant. It was what they put on the discs, as the discs themselves merely contain pits and lands that represent zeros and ones, and either it reads or does not. Any warmth or harshness would be encoded in the zeros and ones, put there by the artists and engineers, and would not be the product of the disc material. I believe this early engineering issue was the birth of, and the sole reason for, the “vinyl is warmer” sentiment.
It’s rare that I actually listen to a CD. Mostly it’s mp3’s in the car. But when I do, It’s heaven. It’s not just the absence of dirt on the record, it’s the dead silence where I can hear the lightest nuances. It’s like I can hear each and every strand of a wire brush hitting a drum or a bass fiddle player in a jazz trio running is fingers down the strings. It’s heaven.
More like 65 years. Although vinyl was used for some 78s, the vast majority were shellac. The vinyl 33 1/3 rpm long-playing record dates to 1948.
Personally, I think a lot of the “warmth” vinyl fans talk about is just poor sound quality. The sounds being played get muddled together. People that listened to vinyl got used to this and thought this was the way music was supposed to sound. When they heard digital recordings that were more faithful to the sound of the actual performance it sounded unnatural to them.
Yip, this is it. Vinyl is missed because it actually sounded different. Most people are unaware that digital music sounds different now than it did in the past (due to the loudness wars).
What I want to know is where the nostalgia is for audio tapes.
I agree with Alessan. It is exactly this type of thing that made the 12 year old me feel like a real audiophile. Getting all the technical aspects just right so that I could get the sound I wanted made me think I knew what I was doing.
You can still get that feeling with the Air Force One turntable and it will only set you back a little over $80k. 
I swear, I don’t know why I subscribe to Stereophile. I get a stiff neck from shaking my head.