Posted on 09/18/2005 7:44:51 PM PDT by SamAdams76
I am giving up CDs. Within the next several months, I expect most of my family's CDs will be converted for playing on our iPods and personal computers. The actual CDs will either be sold or given away. As more people connect their digital music players to their home stereos and car stereos, they realize they have no use for the racks of CDs taking up space in their homes. If you no longer play CDs, why keep them? That is the conclusion my wife and I reached, and that is why I am completing the arduous process of moving the music to more compact computer storage from the CDs.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
My wife and I were on a road trip recently when she wanted to hear a number of different songs that neither of us had listened to in a while. I use a Third generation iPod with with the iTrip FM transmitter, and we were able to hear everything we wanted to within a few seconds of thinking of it. It beats bringing the entire CD collection, shuffling through it, and jumping through tracks to hear each song. Cult? Maybe, but a harmless one. Gay accessory? A lot of gays use the internet, too. Expensive toy? You betcha. I'm sure glad I can afford one.
< to iPod, Jet Jaguar wrote:
You can listen to Rush on the ipod. >
...but I listen to Rush everyday, here at my desk on live stream...AND I get the ditto cam.
When listening to symphonies, et. al., I set my iPod to shuffle by Album, so I still get a random work, but I'll hear all of the movements (in the case of a symphony) in their proper order.
I cannot, live, so I listen when I can. I like that I can download it and go work out, on my schedule.
I've also burned a playlist (ripped into the computer in the AAC format) onto an MP3 disk that worked just fine on my wife's MP3-compatible car CD player.
The tracks are downloaded to the hard drive (or ripped to the hard drive). The typical usage of iPod has the user "sync" their iPod to the computer, which will update the tracks and playlists on the iPod based on your setting from the iTunes applications.
Do you back up all your music files?
Anything I've gotten from the iTunes store (typically through free credits from the Pepsi promotions), I back up to physical media. I do find the fact that you can't re-download from iTunes an annoyance -- if they have a record that your account purchased a particular track or album, your account should be able to download it multiple times.
I did that a long time ago, even before I got an iPod.
I moved everything over to my hard drive and used an mp3 player with a 1 mb sd memory chip.
When we got the iPod we were already in position to load up our collection. It is nice not having to choose what music to stick on the 1 mb tho (although my wife gets the iPod -- I keep using the mp3 player)
It's a gadget. I am interested in why you give it so much credit.
There is another reason to retain them that the author of this article appears ignorant of. The CDs are proof that you paid for the music. Copying that music and giving away its source is piracy.
Try going back to the music store and telling them that because your dog chewed up your favorite CD, which you purchased from them and for which you still have the receipt, they should give you another one for free.
The plastic it's stamped on is worth a quarter.
Will the heat from attic storage damage CDs the way it warps old albums? Just a thought.
I, too, have rejected the iPOD and iTunes because of the format. My primary device for playing music is my PDA (an HP iPAQ 5455) with a 1GB SD card for storage. I simply don't see the utility of carrying around a separate device to play music when my iPAQ plays music and does so much more--videos, games, ebooks, Quicken, photos, contacts, calendar, Internet, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, notes, etc. With the 1GB SD card, I have plenty of room for music that would keep me entertained on long plane rides. Besides, you can't play games on an iPOD while you're listening to music at the same time.
The big difference is that in the electronic model, the track that I've downloaded is encrypted/protected to be played by my account only. Giving me a second, third, or tenth copy does not make it any easier for my to "pirate" the music.
Light and heat are the enemies of burned CDs.
I enjoy my vinyl collection, too. What amazes me is that I've got records going back to the 1930's. It amazes me that they've endured 70 years and will probably last another 70. CD's were supposed to be almost
"indestructable," but I've got many of them that are unplayable after 10 years.
I'm a "worst-case scenario" kind of guy. A society that places its culture completely on digital storage will have that culture disappear after a single EMP attack. There are still musical scores from Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven in existence on paper. Hard drives crash. Records don't. If want something to last, put it on paper, press it on an analog disk, or photograph it and have it printed on quality acid-free paper.
How do you connect your iPod to your home and car stereo?
Try this.
Of course, depending on your player, you could be hamstrung with Windows Media Player, which is worse.
At least it's not Windows-based -- Creative has already had a virus on their products.
But he has his music in at least two places, the iPod and his computer. And he can backup any music. This is far better than the pre-CD burning days, where you were toast if you scratched your CD.
EMP attack doesn't kill CDs which are optical storage. But I'm amazed by your assertion that you have CDs that are unplayable after 10 years. These are not CDs you burned?
I was looking to buy a music player a bit before the iPod came out. All mp3 players were absolutely horrible. I settled on a minidisc player instead. Apple made the first usable consumer-electronics grade mp3 player. Before then they were unusable geek toys.
Of course, phones playing mp3s is pretty old too. I bought a Siemens that played mp3 files in early 2001.
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