David hates timing belts, Thomas thinks the Mazda RX-8 is the one true Honda S2000, and while I’ve never written about it, I actually love how stupid and terrible the Tesla Cybertruck looks. Now, we have Jason hating on CDs. Oh my, the responses were great. [Ed note: I forgot to publish Comment Of The Day last week, so now it’s Comment Of The Last Friday. Oops. – Pete]
Lux Matic:
Could you do a rant on in-dash turntables next?
Fordlover1983 makes a great point about CDs in this digital era:
I STILL buy CDs whenever possible. I immediately make digital copies of them, but I just HAVE to have a physical copy. I’m too worried about whoever owns the “cloud” deciding to either hold my stuff hostage or deny me access to it.
I too had a Discman in my car in the early 90s. The stack of towels was vastly superior to the actual console mount I had for it!
Tekamul:
At the time of their release, CDs were the worst form of portable media except for all those other forms that had been tried prior.
Sure they had shortcomings, but they were an improvement over their predecessors. I think most of your issues stem from either using the wrong tool for the job (a portable player in a car) or a lack of preparation (your cars sound messy).
The visor mounted disc sleeve was WHERE IT WAS AT in the 90s. I had one on each side of each visor. The equivalent cassette storage would’ve been 2 shoe boxes, or maybe in a different situation, the first 3 inches of the passenger foot well.
Ash78 can’t even:
I’ve been reading Torch’s work for more than a decade now and this might be the worst, most incorrect opinion I’ve seen on a mainstream car site in my lifetime.
However, I’m too late and too exhausted to type out a rebuttal so I’ll just peruse the replies instead.
I still like you, JT. I’ll let this one slide. It’s been a long week.
I grew up in the CD era and I miss using them. I always got some great satisfaction from burning my own CDs and giving them custom labels and custom cases. I even likened myself to being a bit of an amateur DJ. I probably still have piles of old Memorex CD-Rs in my closet.
Now, I don’t even own a single computer with a disc drive. Oh gosh, I’m going to need to buy an old CD player now.
For one more COTD, I want to stop at my previous COTD, where Subaru’s new cars are still catching strays. Nlpnt:
Note to self: If you get trapped in any car at NYIAS, it should be the Outback Wilderness. That way at least you won’t have to look at the outside of it. Under no circumstances should you close the door of any other car on the Subaru stand or within line of sight of it.
Have a great weekend, everyone! Happy Monday!
Top graphic image: Amazon
I missed the fun in the original article, but I don’t hate CDs. I also don’t use them anymore; the aftermarket head unit I bought for my ’09 Grand Cherokee doesn’t have a CD player. The Jeep shipped with a 5-disc changer, which I tried out once to see if it worked, then never used again. By 2009 my entire music collection had been converted to digital, which was so convenient to carry around on a little iPod. I still use an iPod touch for my music, along with an SD card (stored in the ’97 ZJ’s aftermarket head unit). Music syncing isn’t an issue, but sometimes my podcasts will randomly decide to drop out, which is annoying.
There is a small selection of CD-Rs in my mom’s Wrangler, which still has its original head unit with no auxiliary inputs. The CD player sometimes struggles with these, but not enough that she wants to upgrade.
I do still buy CDs from my favorite artists, mainly to have an official hard copy. Some still include artwork and liner notes! 🙂
I’ve recently had to go to eBay and find a CD copy of one of my favorite albums. This was an album released in 2009, so I’n not talking about some obscure album for 1957 recorded in the back room of a bodega or something. This was an album on Decca Records in 2000 freaking 9!
Had it on Apple Music and loved it, recently went back to listen to it and three tracks are now grayed out. Of course, licensing crap where other artists who performed on the track have changed their management teams or the like. The only way to get those songs “back” is to go buy physical media.
Surprisingly, YouTube has an excellent selection of out of print albums that (with the right software) can be downloaded and added to your digital collection. After ditching all of my household (and automotive) CD players, it’s the only way I could get copies of .O.Rang’s (formed by 2/3 of the band “Talk Talk”) two albums.
Yup. My work plays Sirius XM over the speakers, and at one point they said something about it being the first time they could play songs from an artist in months (maybe a year+?) due to a license dispute between the artist and the record label. I never noticed, because I own quite a bit of that artist’s works, but multiple friends said that they had been very frustrated by not being able to listen to his music.
I bought a few albums from Apple music to transition to the digital music age. One song on one album refuses to download to my device. I can have it suck data every time I get to that song or I can just not listen to it unless I’m on WiFi. I’m sure I could go to the Apple Store and have someone fix it, but what a stupid tech fail.
They had one job!
I think the CD player issue comes down to quality. My three Ford Premium Sound CD players were fantastic, from start to end. Our 1999 Prius was okay, with scratches on CDs if we hit a rough dirt road. My 2013 basic Mazda CD player crapped-out after 5 years and although I miss it, I don’t want to bother replacing it as a custom fit unit.
As for changing the CD’s, I can do that without looking while driving (even in the plastic cases), as opposed to ANY adjustment on the haptic screens these days, which requires I stare at it for seconds to get anything done.
What I like about CD’s is the damn things simply work.
Cassette players are so damn fiddly now that the newest ones are 25 years old and the sound quality can vary greatly depending on the machine, the quality of the tape itself, how its been stored, how much its been played, what the phase of the moon is. The old players will jam and eat your tape, or your tape is worn out and will break/jam. Good luck figuring out if it was the machine or just an old/worn out tape that might have been stored improperly
CD’s have none of these bullshit issues. I can still play my 30 year old Rage Against the Machine CDs and they still sound AMAZING. I have some cassettes still(not a lot) and cant play them cause my tape deck broke and ate my 1st run Iron Maiden Piece of Mind. Now my cassettes just look pretty, I dont risk playing them and breaking them.
Exactly this. And from a form factor POV, even modern UHD discs are the same shape and are easily backwards-compatible from a 40yo design. Most other media changes forms constantly, but the 4.7″ disc has such a critical mass in the world’s collective media collection, it’s going to be around longer than anything else we’ve tried so far. USB and SSD are great, but still occasionally have their own drawbacks with readability, corruption, etc.
I’ve noticed that the commercial music cassettes I bought in 80s no longer work for various reasons, but the dubbed Maxell UDXLIIs all work fine.
My GenZ kids have collected many CD/DVDs of their favorite music/video. They have already discovered that everything is not readily available via streaming, especially some of the more non-mainstream content.
Depending on the greedy ass record company, some of them used the absolute cheapest tape for their album cassettes. Makes a BIG difference in sound quality and durability. Maxwell tapes, any good name brand and expensive blank cassettes used higher quality tape along with the cartridge itself being better made. If you had a good record player and tape machine, you could get just as good if not better sound ripping an album off of vinyl for your car
That’s the exact set for my dubbed tapes. Friend would record his albums for you on his very nice setup, but you had to provide the Maxell UDXL cassettes, no other brand/type went in his deck.
Late 80s I was able to upgrade my car system to a high-end Alpine head unit w/ metal ability (pull out:)) that I bought off another friend….awesome playback! I moved that Alpine unit through many cars, finally letting in go in early 2000s.
Just a note – I read an article recently about DVDs from the 2000’s no longer working because the material degrades over time – turns out CDs have the same issue. Those with old CD collections might want to back them up before they stop working.
I read (with concern) about CDs delaminating like almost 20 years ago and worriedly perused my vast collection (mostly thanks to shopping at Poobah’s in Pasadena in my 20s… I used to browse through the stacks of used disks for hours until my fingertips were grey and shiny with accumulated schmutz) and played a bunch of old ones and they were all fine. Not a single failed disk (wish I could say the same thing about my boxes of old hard drives, where a solid 20-25% are unsalvagable). Now, my disks are stored vertically in binders, and of course not in the sun or heat, so maybe that helps with longevity.
Poobah’s Records still exists, but moved from the original Walnut Ave. location to a smaller spot on Colorado years ago. I haven’t been there in many years, mostly because LA has some really good radio stations on the left side of the dial (including SoCal Sound at 88.5 and KXLU at 88.9) and I just like getting introduced to new stuff (and re-listening to great old stuff) with FM radio (I’m a Luddite, I know). I have WAY too many radios/stereos in the house, including like a half-dozen Tivolis, a couple of which I bought new for $150 (the piano-finish special edition Model Ones, and one that I got via Craigslist for $9 (another Model One, but needing a bit of TLC… the tuning gets scratchy from oxidation on the coil over time).
🙂 <— my face while listening to those two radio stations in the morning over coffee and email.
Poobah’s! Loved that place, spend many $$ there while I lived in Pasadena. So glad to know it still exists.
The ‘new’ one on Colorado Blvd. (east of old town… near the eastern end of Pasadena near Sierra Madre) isn’t as big and doesn’t seem as charming as that cottage on Walnut used to be, but TBH I haven’t been inside the new location so I can’t speak from experience. I’ll try to stop in next time I’m in the area for the PCC flea market https://pasadena.edu/community/flea-market/ which (IMO) is the absolute best flea market in SoCal period (including the Rose Bowl flea market, which despite or because of its fame, is way, way, way too expensive and too crowded). 😉
Here’s a link to Poobah’s site in case anyone is curious about it: https://poobah.com …I generally detest the act of shopping: never enjoyed it and never will. However, I can make an exception for a decent/local/mom-and-pop hardware store (like Rompage Hardware, now on Western https://www.rompagehollywoodhardware.com) and for used book/record stores (like Iliad Books, now on Cahuenga, in N. Hollywood https://www.iliadbooks.com).
Finally (and still off-topic) but while I’m listing a few of my favorite places to shop at in LA (to me… a guy who generally hates shopping) let me also add Apex Surplus in Sun Valley (maybe a 20-25 minute drive from Hollywood) https://apexsurplus.com which is where (I kid you not) technology of the 20th century goes to die. It is FANTASTIC and worth the visit no matter where you have to drive from.
That sounds alarmist, as I haven’t seen any of my 1980s CDs degrade at all. Any actual data about this? Is it a “leave it in your car in Arizona” thing, or what?
This is what brought it to mind – factory burned DVD from Warner Brothers that have known issues:
https://screencrush.com/what-is-disc-rot/
I read that article and my brain translates it to: “Someone produced cheap DVDs that degrade, and they want to blame it on normal ageing.”
How do you know the people that produced the CDs you own didn’t use the same vendor as Warner Brothers?
Only because my CDs still work. Out of a billion CD’s produced, I wonder how many actually degraded.
When DVD-R’s (writeable) became a way to store data at work, we found that certain brands of DVD-R could only be read on certain computers. Go figure.
Aesop Rock, my favorite rapper, has a new album available on vinyl, CD and CASSETTE TAPE. Hell yeah, buying a new cassette tape in 2025. I knew I kept my BMW’s stock, 1998 taper player for a reason.
I use Bandcamp because it’s DRM-free and you can download and 100% own the music you buy. I’m still waiting to see if Epic Games’ ownership screws anything up but for now I like them. They don’t have the real big artists because of that, but for whatever random metal band I’m listening to it’s been great.
What would a modern physical replacement for CDs be? SD cards? Nintendo Switch-esque cartridges? It’d be a lot easier to hide those from parents than any predecessors.
I understand DT’s loathing of timing belts.
The rest of y’all just have bad hot takes.
There were so many comments on that CD article, I didn’t bother, but holy schniekes what a bad take that was!
Go buy some 8-tracks for your Beetle Torch. Enjoy sound quality like it’s underwater, constant breakage, and no ability to rewind.
I didn’t even bother with CDs for about 15 years until again recently. DVDs, either. My wife and I were early cord cutters for cable TV and I’ve owned a Roku from every single generation, including 2008 when nobody else had heard of this, and they all made fun of us for cutting cable like were impoverished or something. (Any 20-something knows that might be true, but you don’t admit it). I subscribed to Pandora and 3-4 streaming services and Sirius/XM. I was “all in on the future”…until I wasn’t. My wife even convinced me to purge most of my book collection — especially non-fiction, since “all that is available online now!”
Streaming catalogs disappear and reappear, policies change, and sound quality varies wildly — even for a non-audiophile. Parterships come and go, and we’ll all just pawns in the game.
Fast forward to today, my 450-ish CDs are still all playable with amazing sound quality. I rip them all to FLAC, but that’s more as a backup — the original discs rotate their way into the van (where 2 drivers and 4 people mean that pairing up to a single device never works great for everyone). CDs are like the great equalizer, and also a nice way to introduce the kids to an artist, and not just a song. All the jewel cases and special edition books are stashed in a single large bin in the attic.
Now I look back on how I used to spend 3-4 HOURS’ wages on a single CD and it’s starting to feel like that was the cutting-edge decision. Ownership over borrowing has its drawbacks, but it’s mine, and nobody can take that away to boost their stock price.
Followup: If you’re interested, go out and grab what you can. The current suge of unpopularity means that Goowill sells all discs for $2 (YMMV) and you can often find Amazon discs, brand new, for $5-$7 and many of those include an Auto-rip function where it goes into your Amazon music library instantly. AND you get the disc. That’s about half what it costs to buy a digital album. It’s a no-brainer.
“I rip them all to FLAC, but that’s more as a backup ”
What’s this? I still have my CDs, and listen to them regularly, but i would like a backup too.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC
Free Lossless Audio Codec.
Basically, a what it says. A file format for digital audio that is lossless and so preserves the exact sound quality of the CD unlike mp3 or other file types.
You’ll need find a good CD audio “ripping” app for your particular operating system that supports FLAC.
Thank you!
FWIW, even Windows Media Player has FLAC support, so it’s not as specialized or nerdy as it used to be.
There are a number of apps out there, my fave is foobar2000, just need to setup the ripping setup to make tracks be named something like “00-song title” so that Windows doesn’t arrange the tracks in alphabetical order.
https://www.foobar2000.org/
For playback on Android tablets and the like, I use Pulsar, again, many choices out there.
I rip them all to FLAC, but that’s more as a backup
I ripped mine as well but into WAV since that’s the most faithful rip available. Yes I know FLAC is supposed to be lossless but FLAC files are half the size of WAV, what exactly are they cutting without losing any quality?
I figure HD space is cheap enough that I’d rather fill it with redundant WAVs than find out down the line FLACs are lossy after all or some such other issue.
BTW if you find one of your discs is problematic you might find a better copy at your local libraries for your listening pleasure. I dunno about your local libraries but the systems here have a combined catalog of tens of thousands of CDs on the shelves. Furthermore if your local branch does not have what you want you may be able to request it from another, maybe even another library system within your state and have it delivered to your local branch for free. Its a good way to try before you buy.
Compression algorithms can be lossless. As a very basic example, if you take a large image consisting of entirely white pixels and save it as a PNG file, the file will be drastically smaller than the number of pixels yet you’ll be able to perfectly reproduce the original image. That’s pretty close to an ideal example, but even with noisier input data you can often still shrink the file size without losing any data.
Probably true and if storage were more expensive I’d probably do it. But storage is dirt cheap so I’d prefer not to chance it.
Why use the FLAC as backup?
You can set up a home media server pretty easily and then listen to any of that music from anywhere without fiddling with discs. It will have an interface that makes finding the music relatively easy, and you can search or sort by genre, year, artist, etc.
As CDs have gotten harder to find, I’ve made a grudging peace with buying non-drm albums on Bandcamp, storing the FLAC copies on at least two drives and using the MP3s for portable playback.
“The cloud” is just someone else’s datacenter. It is smart not to trust all of your data to someone else’s datacenter.
When you’re maintaining old cars documentation is everything- I regularly use out of print manuals which are NLA and not on the internet either. Print is best and next best are physical storage media and next best digital memory devices that you control. “In the cloud” is really just about lost forever!
In the cloud, aka: evaporated into mist.
I don’t get people’s aversion to storing things on the cloud as long as it’s not the only thing you’re relying on.
It’s critical with backups to have multiple, independent, redundant, and off-site backups, and some combinations of all of those.
If I was in a house with an attached garage and it all burned down including my car, I’d lose all my backups–except for the one I have with Backblaze ($100/year for unlimited storage). It also happens to be the most up-to-date one because it’s always updating my files as I do them. The others I have to manually throw the drives in my hotswap bay, run a Robocopy batch file, and then take out and cycle through them.
Plus, I’ve been making a habit of scanning specific books I like or have liked over the years (or finding them online). NLA? Well, change the availability, and ideally not just for yourself.
I hate print because it takes up so much physical space.
I am currently trying to teach my kids to buy CDs and DVDs as well. Having the physical copy will come in handy at some point. My daughter uses a slightly used Panasonic CD player in her home system right now! Wasn’t it Microsoft that deleted their entire online library at some point?
I like to keep my CDs in case someone challenges my right to the songs downloaded to my phone. Unfortunately, Apple managed to block the transfer of these songs to my new phone, and our newest iMac doesn’t have a CD drive. They have their ways of cutting you off from your music. (They claimed my old phone would not connect to the cloud for iOS reasons.)
Of course any current government legislator (or empowered, non-elected, non-government employed disrupter) can declare all previous licenses are invalid.