I did a FLAC rip of my CD's and now play them on my Astel and Kern MP3 player. It sounds AMAZING, and I don't have a huge binder of CDs cluttering up my office.
CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026
181–190 of 225 posts
Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
All <$100 bluetooth headphones sound like shit though while you can somehow get, not hifi quality but decent cabled ones for less than $50
Either your standards are much higher than mine or you haven’t been exposed to current gen Bluetooth gear. Decent picks sound perfectly fine even in the sub $100 category. Anker, Nothing, or even Sony have some decent stuff in that price range.
Fine.
I don't feel like having to charge two devices.
On long international flights a traditional headphone jack beats Bluetooth every time.
Bluetooth headphones last as long as their batteries do. Wired headphones, particularly ones with replaceable cords, last forever.
I'm not sure why your being argumentive here, it's a known fact that Bluetooth has to compress everything down and sacrifices quality to do so.
Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a couple of artists that I would absolutely buy their vinyl except the shipping is more expensive than the vinyl. I've done it a couple of times for artists I really like and appreciate, but it is most definitely cost prohibitive. So it's pay their bandcamp prices for the digitals and streaming, but the physical media is just made in too limited quantities to be affordable by anyone but FAANG employees
I've not seen a case where shipping was more expensive than vinyl but; I made an album and sell the vinyl on our website. The sleeve to ship the vinyl safely in was somewhere between £0.5 and £1 depending on where we bought it from. Actually shipping it cost £5. So the £30 vinyl came with £6 in shipping fees. Lots of people complained to us that it was expensive, but that's just what it cost.
> I've not seen a case where shipping was more expensive than vinyl but;
Maybe you have the fortune of being on the same continent the item is being shipped. Your use of pounds is a big clue there. Shipping it across the pond is routinely doubling the price of the album plus taxes on top of that
Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny because the CD player in my car has been dead for like 16 years but the cassette player has never been better. Wonder why the cassette player lasted much longer, guessing the optical drive in the car is damaged because CDs will fail to read after like 10 second.
Do you drive over a lot of cattle grids? CD players are precision items and don't take kindly to high impulse. Conversely, many tape decks are seriously robust. My dad had an old Grundig tape deck that was built like a tank (or a 380Z). Pretty sure whoever has that now is still getting quality sounds out of it.
Hmm, I've had for the car for 20 years (it's even older). Where I originally lived the roads were always smooth + paved well (also elevation was basically flat). Now that I'm in a city with actual hills (along with snow plows that ruin the roads), that's when the problems occurred. Seriously never seen so many potholes before in my life!
Not a cattle grid, but wouldn't have thought of the pothole angle without it.
Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Either your standards are much higher than mine or you haven’t been exposed to current gen Bluetooth gear. Decent picks sound perfectly fine even in the sub $100 category. Anker, Nothing, or even Sony have some decent stuff in that price range.
Fine. I don't feel like having to charge two devices. On long international flights a traditional headphone jack beats Bluetooth every time. Bluetooth headphones last as long as their batteries do. Wired headphones, particularly ones with replaceable cords, last forever. I'm not sure why your being argumentive here, it's a known fact that Bluetooth has to compress everything down and sacrifices quality to do so.
> On long international flights a traditional headphone jack beats Bluetooth every time.
Current gen over ear ANC headphones have battery life in excess of any international flight. Most in excess of a round trip, even. True wireless ones don’t, but that’s not typically what you use on a plane. If you’re using the in flight infotainment, you’re corded anyways… so it’s a bit of a moot point. I can’t possibly imagine flying without ANC headphones at this point though, which requires a battery. The cable is also such a pain on a long flight. Any time you get up or move around, it’s inevitable you have to relocate or move the cable around to prevent it from getting snagged. If I could have Bluetooth on every infotainment system I’d love that.
> I'm not sure why your being argumentive here, it's a known fact that Bluetooth has to compress everything down and sacrifices quality to do so.
My point is that although that’s technically true, it’s practically not true. The quality is sufficient that you’ll hardly notice for most environments. If you’re in some listening room, sure fine. Use your fancy wired headphones.
In public, with environmental noise, etc or especially on planes? The picture is a lot muddier.
Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026
#186"younger audiences appear to be embracing physical formats"
Journalists have been saying this like it's a fact for like 15 years now. It's wishful thinking, sorry.
Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026
#187Buy CDs, buy vinyl, buy merch, go see shows — support artists instead of platforms and middlemen wherever you can. This is a welcome trend.
I've been turning back to radio. So many talented DJs playing great music around the world.
I only listen to FM radio in the car. This has forced me to kinda enjoy Mexican music, cause it's either that or 1980s millennials' nostalgia channels.
Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to buy people media now. You can't really gift people CDs, DVDs, or Blu-Rays because nobody has players anymore.
Game consoles play all of those. For now I guess lol
Funny enough, neither the PS4 or PS5 support CDs.
https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/play-vide...
Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nothing could sell a phone with a jack, but then you don't need to pay 300$ for some crappy Bluetooth headphones Have you looked at the price of actually mediocre Bluetooth headphones recently? They’re like… $20 for a distinct fine set of true wireless headphones, including the case, even from a real brand. Certainly comparable to $20 wired headphones.
All <$100 bluetooth headphones sound like shit though while you can somehow get, not hifi quality but decent cabled ones for less than $50
You can start getting decent bluetooth headphones from $60 to $80 if you are picky about the brand. Anker has had several winners in that range over the last 10 years.
Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Back in the day, we'd rate ourselves by how many dongles we'd string together to get things to work.
Some time after the Thunderbolt 3 MacBooks were released I had to get data off of a FireWire 400 drive. Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2, Thunderbolt 2 to FireWire 800, FireWire 800 to FireWire 400. Everything mounted up just fine.
That's pretty impressive. The closest to that I personally dealt with was back in the days of Mac Quadras and the ADB port where software was protected with dongles that would daisy chain via ADB.
In audio connectors, I've had some pretty crazy builds getting from various formats when the exact right thing isn't available but a giant milk crate of random cables was on hand.