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
      • 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.

        • @lseif@sopuli.xyzOP
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          13 months ago

          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 :-)

          • @BurningRiver@beehaw.org
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            3 months ago

            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.

            • @lseif@sopuli.xyzOP
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              03 months ago

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

              • @variants@possumpat.io
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                03 months ago

                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

  • Captain Aggravated
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    03 months ago

    Back when I actually used CDs for music, I had a CD MP3 player made by Rio. I also had a copy of Roxio that could basically use a CD-RW almost like a thumb drive, you didn’t have to worry about writing sessions or whatever, you could just add and remove files, so that’s how I managed my MP3 player. I think I only used that one CD-RW.

    For regular redbook audio discs I would just use CD-Rs.

  • @Wage_slave@lemmy.ml
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    03 months ago

    Won’t lie, for a short period I had a Sony mini disk set up and I don’t think I can ever appreciate other modern physical mediums of music as much.

    And I can’t explain why other than personal biast reasons, either.

  • @Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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    03 months ago

    Burning CDs back in the day was a sort of art. You had to choose a write speed slow enough that your single-CPU computer could keep the buffer fed, but fast enough that you could get through the whole thing without dying of boredom or needing to use the bathroom, because walking across the room was enough to make the head skip and corrupt the data.

    A failed burn with a CD-R turned a disc into a coaster. A CD-RW gave you several chances to get a good burn.

    • Monkey With A Shell
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      03 months ago

      I had one of the first CD writers with buffer underrun protection (TDK 32x / 12x / 10x if I recall) and suddenly felt invincible because it was pretty near guaranteed that the burn would work.

      • @intensely_human@lemm.ee
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        03 months ago

        Kinda like we all take antilock brakes for granted now. Back in the day just slamming on the brakes in a bad situation would mean losing control of the car.

  • @invertedspear@lemm.ee
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    03 months ago

    In the thick of the cd era I tried to use RW and there wasn’t much rewritable about them. Any attempt to change the data, even to just add a new track, turned the disk into a coaster. Better to stick to CD-R and just burn a whole new disk each update.

  • SagXD
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    03 months ago

    I hate being GenZ I don’t even know yet there’s more than one type of CD

    • Captain Aggravated
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      03 months ago

      I’m a mid-to-older millennial. My elders would say shit like “What? You don’t know how to use a gramophone? You young whippersnappers are completely worthless.” And I find that behavior absolutely abhorrent.

      If you were here in person, I’d offer to spend some time burning some CDs. I’ve still got a computer with some pretty decent optical drives laying around. I can probably even scare up some blank discs. We’d find some music, burn it to a disc and then try it out on my old boom box.

        • Captain Aggravated
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          03 months ago

          If you’re an asshole to a kid ironically, and the kid thinks you’re an asshole, you’re just an asshole. An entire generation wasn’t taught that, and look at the world they built.

    • @squeakycat@lemmy.ml
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      03 months ago

      Don’t hate it! You were just born in a different time. Your time will come where you have to explain to the young ones about how “smart phones” worked since they’ll just have their implants as interfaces. And also jetpacks.

  • r00ty
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    03 months ago

    I’ll be honest. When I upgraded my PC I finally moved to one without any bays. So my rewriter that I’ve not used for probably 10+ years came out of my setup.

    Funny story, I did some work on my old setup some 5 years or so ago. I must have unplugged the rewriter to get at some cabling and never re-connected it. I never noticed in those 5 years, until I was taking the parts out I was moving to my new system and saw it was just not connected.

    Now, when I DID make CDs around 10+ years ago or more, I used CD-Rs.

  • Monkey With A Shell
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    03 months ago

    I like CD-R, not for regular use but it occured to me that it’s one of the only consumer accessable media formats that are actually write once. It’s kind of neat to make a custom disk that is forever unchanged, pop it on years later and go through what was your sound X years back without having to worry about whatever service having pulled licences or modified lists.

    • Shadow
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      03 months ago

      If you still have any minidiscs around, glue a couple magnets on the back and they make a great retro fridge magnet.

    • Dr. Wesker
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      3 months ago

      Okay, so I somehow missed the whole minidisc era. I imagine probably because it was shortlived, or just impractical for me at the time. However I find them incredibly fascinating, especially portable minidisc players. I’ve low key been on the lookout for one while thrifting, so I have an excuse to dive in.

      • gregorum
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        03 months ago

        they were super-cool, and, yeah, it was very short-lived. i had a net-MD player, a small, portable MD player that ran on a single AA battery and lasted ages. it could also record on-device and also played mp3s. i loved that fucking thing!

        MDs were better than CD-RWs because they were 1/2 the size and came in a case while being almost skip-proof.