Collecting on the Cheap: CD's
The era of the vinyl bargain is over. While we might long for the time when we could get an album for $1-2 each is gone and dead on a wave of technology revival that was both unlikely and astonishing. While this wave might burn itself out, or go on to be a dominant media again is anyone's guess. But for the foreseeable future, there won't be the killer Thrift Shop Finds of LP as even the charities realize they can get some real money for their copy of Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits in mint condition (when 10-15 years ago, they'd be lucky to sell it for $1). But like the Iron Throne in an unnamed overly long and bloody TV show, a new bargain sits proudly, if uneasily: the CD.
Funny thing, CD. Was supposed to be "perfect sound forever" and after it's initial teething pains proved it worth by being able to do things vinyl couldn't, and has struggled mightily to exercise it's own distortions and bugbears and in the end is capable of sounding pretty good (so long as the producer doesn't wreck the dynamic range or process a beautiful voice to banality with their suite of digital tools).
And now they can't give it away as people dump all of their CD's in a lemming like rush to streaming services (and a few of those back to vinyl, too).
Even when buying new, a lot of the time, the CD will be significantly cheaper than the MP3 version, and at the end you OWN the recording (you rent an MP3 that can be revoked at any time if you believe the small print ...). If you start for looking for when the biggest gremlins were exercised on the recording side of things (after around 1990) and know your genre enough to know what years and/or what performances to avoid (loudness wars just about killed some popular music for sound quality), but standard collecting know-how. And at $1-4 each for used copies, you can afford to make mistakes, too (our example shows used CD's starting at $2.21 and that's online, too!)
Our point here is that there still are bargains to be had for music, and if you have a good CD player or DAC (and experimenting with some CD cleaner solution and a microfiber towel can sometimes help a cloudy disc), you will be tapping your foot and humming along (or whatever you do when listening) for a lot less.
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| Look at this? Vinyl from $15 (used), MP3 $14, and Lowly CD? $8! All for your selection on Amazon in this example. |
Funny thing, CD. Was supposed to be "perfect sound forever" and after it's initial teething pains proved it worth by being able to do things vinyl couldn't, and has struggled mightily to exercise it's own distortions and bugbears and in the end is capable of sounding pretty good (so long as the producer doesn't wreck the dynamic range or process a beautiful voice to banality with their suite of digital tools).
And now they can't give it away as people dump all of their CD's in a lemming like rush to streaming services (and a few of those back to vinyl, too).
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| Silver Disk ... cue up your best Python voice and repeat after me: "I'm Not Dead Yet!" |
Even when buying new, a lot of the time, the CD will be significantly cheaper than the MP3 version, and at the end you OWN the recording (you rent an MP3 that can be revoked at any time if you believe the small print ...). If you start for looking for when the biggest gremlins were exercised on the recording side of things (after around 1990) and know your genre enough to know what years and/or what performances to avoid (loudness wars just about killed some popular music for sound quality), but standard collecting know-how. And at $1-4 each for used copies, you can afford to make mistakes, too (our example shows used CD's starting at $2.21 and that's online, too!)
Our point here is that there still are bargains to be had for music, and if you have a good CD player or DAC (and experimenting with some CD cleaner solution and a microfiber towel can sometimes help a cloudy disc), you will be tapping your foot and humming along (or whatever you do when listening) for a lot less.
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