That’s why I have three separate backups of my library, which includes one backup off-site.
The point has already been made but if you do decide to get rid of CD’s, make several backups of your library.
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I find discogs marketplace is a great way of getting out of print or hard to find albums as well of disposing of stuff I no longer listen to.
Some discs can be worth quite a bit depending on rarity/pressing/age etc.
Plus when CD’s make a comeback in 20 years you will regret not having kept them (like me with all my vinyl I gave away coz CD’s were the future!).
What about putting them up on Audiogon for sale?
Definitely don’t dump them.
Look at Jewel Sleeves to reduce the amount of space they consume.
I’ve decided to do the right (and easiest) thing and keep the discs. No copyright violations, no fear of losing my collection, and no concern about only getting pennies on the dollar for my investment.
I will, however, be stripping the discs out of the jewel cases and putting them into windowed sleeves. That should substantially cut down the footprint.
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That’s a good plan. Also, someone will want them someday.
4 here
2 on each laptop
1 on the nas (mirrored drives)
1 in the cloud (synch with laptops)
I did what you describe some years ago, and I kinda regretted it later. Because once I had all Discs in sleeves in a large book-like case, I never ever looked at them again and stopped playing any music. Then I discovered Roon. Which is great. But Sometimes I miss walking up to my CD collection and browsing through them like I do with my books.
Anyway you may like it that way. Good luck.
This. I like giving away random CDs as a gift to someone I know likes this kinda music. When you have a large cd collection that you don’t care about too much you never ever have to worry about buying presents. Haha. I liked it.
Yes, but you would need to delete them from your device so as not to violate the copyright.
I don’t miss spinning CDs, in the least.
I’m a Roon lifer now.
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For the reduction of „screen time“ Roon is not ideal;)
I find myself more than I’d want to listening to music but also browsing the web. That is an advantage of CDs.
Plus, some people argue CDs sound better. But that is another topic.
Does that argument apply to CD’s that have been ripped from downloads?
Some CDs are collectible and worth keeping or selling. I would not remove those from their cases.
I like having the CDs. I also like having them as reference for the exact version and mastering I put on Roon. I also have been pulling them out and scanning a few because I like Roon as a digital twin.
Pictures of backs and discs are a joy for me to see in Roon
I box them and store them in a closet if not on shelves.
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There is no way a CD transport is better than a well executed streaming setup.
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It was not my argument. I have never listened to a 10.000€ CD player so I cannot tell. Others have, and they argue otherwise.
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Here is what I would tell John Darko:
Look, the CD transport is not going to be sending different bits to the DAC than the something sending a rip of that CD to the DAC. The difference is that CD transport you are using is cleaner electrically. That’s why it sounds better. Or, it is not cleaner and you like the sound of the noisier signal from the CD transport. I will assume it is the former. There is no reason that a streamer cannot sound as good or better than the CD transport. Again, the bits are no different between FLAC and CD. So the difference is the quality of the electrical signal in which those bits are encoded.
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I was in the same situation several years ago. I owned thousands of CDs that were taking up way too much room. Instead of getting rid of them I bought several Case Logic CD binders that hold over 300 CDs per binder. Each “page” within the binder holds 4 CDs on each side. I put the CD with their paper sleeves into each CD slot and was able to rid of all of the jewel cases. I ended up being able to keep all of my CDs within a fraction of the space they were taking up when each CD was in its own jewel case.
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I accumulated a large CD collection mostly by buying “with content listings” wholesale lots on eBay. Some vendors guarantee a maximum number of duplicates, but I still ended up with over 5,000 CDs from this source, with about 1,000 duplicates, and about 1,000 drossy Christmas compilations and worse. However, the 3,000 CDs I actually wanted cost me about $3,000. Not bad for legal uncompressed 16/44.1 music. 98% of the CDs ripped perfectly with dBPowerAmp and CUETools corrections.
I tried to get rid of the, um, less desirable CDs and duplicates in several ways. eBay isn’t a good route because, with rare exceptions, nobody wants the music, and “blind date” sales of bulk CDs are for pennies each. The local used CD/vinyl store wanted about 10 out of 2,000, for about $1 each. I finally got rid of them by putting them in boxes at my office for colleagues to take for free. The rest went to Goodwill, which seems to relish Christmas CDs.
I keep one physical copy of every ripped CD for the licensing issue mentioned above. Bags Unlimited www.bagsunlimited.com sells various poly sleeves, including one that holds a CD or two, booklet and the “back matter” insert. When loaded with a CD/insert/booklet, they’re about a third as thick as a jewel case, and so my revolving “1,000 CD” tower holds all 3,000 CDs. I tried binders briefly, but them found expensive (or cheap and nasty) and bulky.
If you don’t want the booklet and other printed material, just put the CDs onto one of those spindles that 100-packs of CD-Rs come on to keep them for copyright/licensing purposes.
The other source of very cheap CDs is the big classical box sets that are often great, but also take up very little space.
The most space-efficient CD storage has got to be the spindle boxes recordable CD-Rs shipped in. You could probably do the same with a wooden dowel and a big ziploc bag to keep the dust and humidity out. I use the case logic binders myself but I haven’t played an actual disc in a decade or more.