Gary SteelGARY STEEL has been thinking about vinyl vs. streaming vs. compact discs (etc) and just wants it all to stop.
Are you as tired of reading those “compact discs make big comeback” stories as I am? I’m also sick to the stomach of the profusion of stories banging on about how vinyl is now the winning physical format. As for the debate about whether SACDs have advantages over Blu-ray Audio discs, well… phooey!
Have you noticed that all of those who favour music streaming, and have done so for years, just keep on quietly doing what they do without having to make a fuss about it? But I have noticed how sniffy streaming-only types get around those of us who still enjoy listening to music via a legacy format. You can feel the judgment. “Okay boomer, do what you want but you’re a loser!”
So, here’s my pitch: Wars suck and there’s no point in fighting about formats or being derisive of someone’s choices thereof. And personally, I like ‘em all!
There was a time, much earlier this century, when I spent a furtive 6 months copying my CD collection to the hard drive of my computer, thinking that I could then put those CDs in boxes and create some beautiful display space on my walls. I got about halfway through my 4000-odd CD collection before the computer drive died. Backup? What backup? Then I bought a NAS drive and went through the same boring process again before something weird happened and I discovered that iTunes had somehow bungled the metadata, making my downloads unsearchable. Or something like that – it’s hard to remember as I tend to shut bad memories away in a dusty corner of my mental loft.
The long and short of it is that I still have a large CD collection to go with my fairly compact 1000 or so LPs. Oh, and a hard drive-cum-streamer that a very competent audioholic put together for me, which also contains something like 7 terabytes of his own music collection should I ever want to compare the downloads with the files available on hi-res streaming service Qobuz.
Yep, I’ve made peace with the fact that I enjoy just about all the available formats. For years, it bugged me and I still struggle with the fact that I don’t have enough shelving space for the physical objects. But lately, I’ve really enjoyed playing CDs and I still find that sometimes they sound better than what’s available on Qobuz. In fact, an identical file will sound noticeably better on CD – despite any mechanical distortions caused by jitter and whatnot – to my ears just because my player is a particularly nice-sounding one. But I also own some CDs that sound like crap compared with the respective Qobuz file. A good example of this is The Chills’ Kaleidoscope World compilation. When I cranked it up after Martin Phillipps died a few months back I had to take it off, it just sounded so awful. Then I compared it with the Qobuz version. It was like night and day.
I have audiophile friends who have thrown out their CDs and now do all their music listening via the oldest and newest formats: vinyl and streaming. There’s a certain logic to that. Aesthetically, vinyl is attractive, and it just feels good to play a record. And if you’ve got real dollars to sink into a great turntable and audiophile-grade vinyl, then it’s a no-brainer.
But CDs are still my go-to. They’re reliable (I’ve only ever had a couple of casualties) and I just love owning the work of an artist that I adore. It’s so much better having all the Frank Zappa albums there on my shelves, in chronological order, than all haphazardly on Qobuz. Also, because I like a lot of obscure music, I’m constantly finding that Qobuz doesn’t have things I’ve searching for. For instance, the other day I went through a phase of listening to the work of a chap called Anthony Moore. Now, he’s not really that obscure. He was critically acclaimed in the 1970s for his work with a group called Slapp Happy and then had a solo career in the late ‘70s to the mid-’80s. He’s worked with many other artists and even wrote lyrics for the post-Roger Waters version of Pink Floyd. But anyway, my favourite Anthony Moore albums are Flying Doesn’t Help (’77), World Service (’79) and The Only Choice (’84), but only one of those excellent records is available on Qobuz. Luckily, I’ve got the original vinyl of Flying Doesn’t Help as well as the CD version, and just the other day, I found the 2021 LP remaster for sale in an Auckland record store for just $13, so, of course, I needed it. All three versions of the album sound great, with only minor differences in sound mix. But to hear any of them my only choice is LP or CD for what is probably some obscure legal reason preventing them being streamed.
For a long time, I resisted buying any new vinyl, and I’m simply not financial enough to afford the $60 to $100 (and more) stores are charging. Also, the pressings can be awful. With Flying Doesn’t Help, I was really lucky. The vinyl was superbly silent, the record perfectly centred, and the sonics were just gorgeous. My turntable isn’t fancy, but since I upgraded my cartridge and started using an amp with a decent phono stage, on a decent disc the sound can be luxurious and almost liquid (in a good way). But as with CDs and streaming, delving into my LP collection can be a haphazard experience. Those who say that vinyl always sounds better than CD should really get a life. I’ve got quite a few vinyl LPs that are much, much worse-sounding than the CD versions, simply because so many pressings – especially New Zealand ones – back in the ‘80s and ‘90s were shit.
But back to CDs. I’ve always been a cheapskate, because when you love music and you want to hear a wide selection and you’re always looking for the next great thing you can’t afford to buy everything at full price. So, since the dawn of my interest in record collecting, I’ve headed straight to the sale bins. This way, I’ve heard A LOT of crap but also discovered some of my favourite albums and artists. My first Frank Zappa album was on sale. All my original Tim Buckley LPs were US “cutouts” (deletions) costing less than a dollar each.
These days, the bargains are mostly to be had in CDs. Everyone wants vinyl, it’s highly collectable. You can get compact discs in many op shops for as little as 50 cents each. Recently, I’ve picked up some great titles on the German jazz-and-more label ECM that way. It’s become hard to even find CDs in record shops now that the likes of Real Groovy are 95 per cent vinyl, which is depressing. But wherever you do find CDs, they’re cheap as chips. I also like getting commemorative box sets of my favourite acts and am much more inclined to save up the requisite dollars for a CD collection than the same thing (usually very truncated) on vinyl. So… it’s a great time to be buying CDs because of their relative prices.
I’m not going to delve into other formats because you get the point. I do have a small SACD collection and some Blu-ray Audio discs (in that case, simply added to box sets) with 5.10 mixes and whatever. But I don’t have a surround system and my BD player doesn’t sound half as good as my CD player, so there you go! If I had a really great BD player and someone offered to set up a surround sound speaker system for free in my listening room, I wouldn’t say no! I’m also kind of envious of those more arcane listening fetishes like albums on reel-to-reel. Although I don’t even have a cassette tape player set up, I do kind of miss that format too: great memories of struggling against the wind in Wellington while listening to the fab sounds of my Sony Professional Walkman. Oh, and let’s not forget car audio! Some of my most memorable musical moments have occurred in cars. For instance, I never forget the first time I put on the tape of Public Enemy’s sonically extreme It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back (’88). I’d never heard anything like it and somehow, the car was the right place to hear it.
I still lust after a room that isn’t cluttered with ill-matching CD shelves but I’m coping. One of these days the kids will move out and I’ll get a dedicated shelving room for all my recorded artefacts. Or maybe I’ll just decide to get rid of the lot one fine day. This collector mania isn’t life or death, after all. It should be fun.
What do YOU think?
