Do you prefer CD-R or CD-RW for music?

lseif@sopuli.xyz to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 106 points –

For those who use CDs for music, which writable CD type do you use, and why?

Main differences:

  • CD-R can only be written once
  • CD-RW is more expensive
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im sorry i just like cds πŸ₯Ί

I'm sincerely curious: why?

Hipsters claim vinyl sounds better than digital, despite a complete lack of evidence, but at least there's a measurable difference between analog and digital, if only in the additional dirty noise produced by the hardware. With CDs, though... digital is digital. There's literally no difference between a wav and a CD; in fact, you can get more bits in a flac recording if it's recorded right, which would only be degraded by recording to a CD.

So, is it the form factor? Some tactile benefit? Or you like the mandatory ritual of switching out CDs every 60 minutes? Why do you like CDs... because it isn't for the sound.

driving. my car has a sort-old cd player, no smart-stuff. i dont like to connect my phone everytime i get in the car. cds are just convenient for my case :-)

I drive a 20 year old Toyota, and swapped out the double din for a carplay compatible unit for $299, plus the cost of a custom wiring harness. You get the best of technology, without the worst of car manufacturers poaching your data. I still have my book of CDs that I compiled over 25 years or so, but without the headache of having to load disks while I’m driving. The phone connects automatically when I turn the car on. I’ve only had to connect to it once, when I first installed the new head unit.

FWIW, the factory stereo I replaced had a cassette / 6 disk cd deck in it. I just don’t like swapping disks when I’m driving 75 mph on the freeway.

if i am driving for long enough, i will just pull over to change discs when im sick of the album repeating.

That reminds me of a work van I used to drive where the cd player would overheat and stop after a while so I had to stop at an electronics store to get one of those Bluetooth to radio cigarette lighter things

I think they're a great format to buy, but nowadays not that great to use. They offer the best audio quality of all physical media (fight me, vinyl enthusiasts), are really easy to handle (on par with cassettes), offers track selection (later cassette decks could detect silence but this doesn't work for gapless tracks), the equipment is rather cheap nowadays, it's a digital format without DRM... red book CD might be the best consumer media industry has ever created, my only gripe in the modern world is that its sampling rate is a bit off today's 48kHz.

However, I only rip the CDs to lossless and then rarely take them out of my cupboard anymore, don't even have a CD player. Using CDs in a mobile setting is a whole different beast, it requires a buffer and can also damage the discs in the worst case. But at home, pressed CDs live very long without any degradation in sounds quality, regardless of use. And ironically, buying them is often cheaper than buying non-physical only, though it often means that you end up with tracks you don't want. But that's an issue all physical media has.