Casparcritique #4: CDs in the post modern music age

More and more people wonder if they should hang on to their CD collection. Most important reason for this, is the fact that they use online streaming services to listen to music. There is a number of arguments though, to hang on to your CDs a bit longer. Let's see if we find these arguments convincing.

Until not to long ago, the music we listened to at home, we found in the few square meters of closet space occupied by CDs. Ordered according to colour, alphabet, style, or whatever appropriate. When we felt like listening, you just went up to the collection and with our index finger found what we wanted to hear. The bigger the collection, the bigger the change you'd pick out something you hadn't heard in a long time. I can tell you that my wife and I we have about 500 CDs and it is not too hard to find something for any kind of mood, at any time. But if we use, let's say, Spotify, we don't have the collection in front of us and we have to chose from what we remember at that moment. I can only imagine the limitations this gives us in the variety of music we listen to.

Now there is an argument at which I am not a specialist, that is the technical side of sound quality. (That is, I am not an expert on the theoretical side, I'll stick to practical). As the old vinyl album had specific sound qualities that the CD doesn't have, the online, streaming method also has got it's limitations at which studio and recording hardware must adapt. Until recently, music was recorded and mixed with CD standards in mind for the reproduction of it. If you use that quality, but with streaming and, possibly, small boxes (from your laptop for example), obviously it will not sound as we might want it to sound, more over it is not the way it was intended by the musicians. More over, and much worse, will be the old vinyl being trasferred to CD, without a good digital remastering, later suppressed to digibits and streamed; I can assure you: this was not the way the music was intended to sound originally.

The last thing I'd like to mention is the recent revival of vinyl. Who would have thought this would happen at the height of the CD era, in the mid-90s? But I'll tell you, this will happen to the CD as well. One day there will be demand for all those 'original' CDs, now available on streaming. Especially the ones recorded, arranged and mixed for CD will get popular, just as some of us get off on the vinyl sound.

So, my suggestion is not to get rid of your CD collection. If you don't use them, store them. My tip of the day is to make playing lists with the CD titles you're storing away. That way, you will always have your collection at hand and still enjoy the music!