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Things I hate about CDs

Since my local HMV closed down, and the local independent record-cum-nick nack shop insists on charging €16.99 for new release CDs, I have found myself back in the 1990s – priced out of the market and just a little bit ambivalent of the product. So I thought that I would reflect on compact discs and the things about them that I hate:

1. Jewel cases – I hate them. These god-awful plastic boxes that break and shatter if you drop them. The hinges have a life expectancy of about 3 seconds between purchase and being broken off. The cd holding tray is particularly annoying: early CDs had hard black plastic trays that firmly held the disc in place. Since clear plastic trays came into vogue, I reckon there is a 40% incidence of  the little shards of plastic breaking off – before the case is opened for the first time, resulting in a badly seated CD – at risk for scrapes and scratches.
2. Liner notes – although liner notes improved during the CD era, the placement of said notes, in particular the CD cover inside the front of the jewel case is extremely annoying. Often to get the cover/notes out from the little holders you end up damaging them.
3. CDs that don’t list on their surface the artist and album. Often there is some globby artwork on the disc (this was a real problem during the 1990s) and maybe some sign of trademark activity or a record company logo and that’s it! I often have 20 or 30 CDs in my car – once ejected from a multiplayer it is often impossible to match up the disc and the jewel case. I have had recourse to putting the CD into a computer for iTunes to recognize so that it could be rehoused.
4. CD Text: how hard is it for a record company to put on the disc the track titles and album title? CD text has been available for 20 years, but only about 1 in 10 CDs come with it……hint to record companies – since the advent of the iPod – we have gotten used to seeing the track titles while listening to music.
5. They have virtually no residual value: well your Oasis and Beyonce CDs right now, anyway.
6. They don’t sound very good compared with vinyl.*
7. Sequential remasters that sound worse and worse – anything released between 2000 and 2012 (in pop or rock) is a victim of the loudness war.
8. When they came out they cost twice the price of vinyl and cassette.
9. A lot of the early releases sounded muffled because they did not come from the original master tapes, later releases sounded muffled because they were brickwalled by the loudness war.

10. Hmmmmmm…..nothing else!

Conversely, WHAT I LOVE ABOUT CDs

1. You can play them in your car: once they solved the skipping thing and actually put CD multichangers in cars – they have been an ever-present source of entertainment. In recent times, however, I have taken to streaming Deezer throught the Bluetooth connection.
2. Unlike DVDs/Blu-Ray discs/VHS tapes, there is no copy protection, no trailers and they always play on any CD player in any region anywhere. All physical disc players are backwards compatible with CD – try and find anything that will play your HD-DVDs now – you will always be able to find something to play the CD on. CDs can be easily ripped to a hard drive (losslessly) or to a portable media device in MP3 format. In lossless format, even the crappiest home network will stream the 16bit 44.1 kHz file. If you want to keep your CD in “mint” condition, make a copy with a CD duplicator, then cover it up and put it away. The copy is a bit-perfect clone: try and do that with a vinyl record, tape or SACD.
3. Everything was released on CD: where did those millions of tracks come from on itunes and Spotify? From CD Rips. And, as we have subsequently learned, many historically important (and I am talking up to the mid 1980s) recordings are on rapidly deteriorating master tapes (even the Beatles tapes needed to be “baked”). Millions of recordings released during the CD era have degraded beyond recovery and the 16 bit CD version may be the last decent version of many recordings available.
4. For archive and historic recordings, the dynamic range of the original is well within the range of CD (remember CD has a way better DR than vinyl), and so a well mastered CD should be a good a representation of a recording as you will ever need.
5. Provinance: AAD ADD DDD – from the outset the music industry at least attempted to tells us the source and provinance of the music on CD. These days we have no idea where the files on HDTracks and on the majority of  vinyl reissues came from.
6. CDs don’t pop, crackle, unspool, get covered with all kinds of weird mould that requires extensive (and expensive) cleaning.
7. Digipacks solved all of the problems associated with jewel cases.
8. Deluxe editions – you get so much more for your money (although many releases could be better – what about the “Frewheelin’ Outtakes” Bob?).
9. They are dirt cheap: you can buy 50 CD sets of Miles Davis for $100, or everything Elvis released in movies, or Johnny Cash’s Columbia recordings – for next to nothing. For <$20 you can have the complete recordings by most bands, albeit in cheap cardboard covers. For a little more you can get deluxe boxes of complete recordings by Roxy Music, Joni Mitchell or deluxe box sets with lots of bonus tracks. Box sets that cost $100 10 years ago are now less than $20. For a couple of hundred euro I assembled a seriously impressive classical music collection by buying Deutsche Gramophone, Chandros and Decca boxes. Sony music’s two Jazz boxes are a fantastic introduction to the genre (buy them now because these kind of deals won’t last).
   They are a bargain. In my local second hand music shop, (badly pressed, scuffed and scratched) vinyl records that they could not give away 20 years ago are selling for €15 – three to five times more expensive than the CD, which likely sounds better. For example – for the price of 4 analogue productions 45rpm Blue Note Vinyl Records, you could buy 20 or 30 blue note CDs.
   CDs now cost, online and in second hand stores, less than the price of lossy itunes downloads (with no liner notes or physical product).

10. CDs have long term value. Nobody wants CDs now – very few people wanted vinyl records in 1994 – now a well maintained vinyl collection of quality recordings is worth a fortune. No, your copy of Oasis’ “Be here now” is not going to be worth much, but low volume productions by high quality independent labels (like esoteric, cherry red etc.) have value – because, in time, those recordings will become scarce. Try and get second hand ECM recordings cheaply! Moreover, with Spotify, Deezer and other streaming services, younger people will become more adventurous with their musical tastes – find recordings they really like and want to have a physical copy. For example, I came across “Greek Variations” by Neil Ardley on Deezer: loved it. Looked for the CD – deleted – minimal cost (second hand) £30 (bought on ebay). On vinyl, this recording will set you back £300 – prohibitive. Some CDs will be collectable.

11. Coolness – CDs are cool: I have no time for flared trousers and disco music – but people 10 years younger than me think they are cool. You can now buy new release cassette tapes in some record shops – why? – There is close to nothing good to say about tapes (although I like how they sound, wow and flutter included). They are selling because somebody thinks that they are cool. Over the next few years, CD sales will evaporate, due to the combination of downloading, record store closures and vinyl madness. As a consequence, low volume CD releases will have long term value (just like 1990s era vinyl) and they will be cool collectors’ items.

12. CDs are seriously robust. When CDs came out first there were claims by the music industry that they were indestructible – nonsense of course – they become scratched and damaged if abused like any other product. However – I have CDs that I bought in the late 1980s and they still play – perfectly. I have hard drives and USB (flash) keys that I bought last year that “bricked” themselves for no reason. Anything that I commit to computer drive I have to back up at least twice – I have had the experience of losing a RAID array and the backup of the backup fail in the same day. I once dropped a Joe Louis Walker CD from 4 feet – it landed side on and cracked: refusing to play on my CD player. I was able to rip the disc losslessly using DBPoweramp – error free – and make a replacement copy. Try doing that with vinyl or cassette. If you want to have a permanent copy of your favorite recording – buy the CD.

13. You can pack them away in a box in the attic and they will never warp or grow mold.

14. You can get into hi-fidelity for reasonably low cost with compact disc. For less than £500 you can connect your DVD/Blu-Ray player (that you already own) to a DAC-magic DAC (which will also connect to your PC/mac), integrated amp (Denon, Marantz, Cambridge Audio) and a decent set of speakers (Dali, Focal, Wharfdale, Tannoy). This will play your CDs and music files in glorious hi-fidelity. Of course, a £500 system from Richer Sounds (or equivalent) will knock the socks off ANY wireless streamer speaker that the big electrical shops are pushing these days.

15. I grew up listening to records, 7” singles in particular in the late 1970s. I never threw them out: it is great fun playing these records to my children today. If you grew up with CDs, don’t give them to Oxfam, put them away, and play them for your children some day. Physical will always beat files in nostalgia terms.

~ by Pat Neligan on January 13, 2014.

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: Compact discs