There are many ways to enjoy our great hobby. Silver discs, both CD and SACD, remain vital formats. It’s still my favorite way of listening to music!
A well produced CD, or SACD, in a current high end disc player ($1-3k) can sound GREAT with no muss, no fuss.
Please don’t believe that nonsense you may be hearing about CDs being extinct. You’ve been hearing the same baloney about vinyl for 40 years. Did you believe that too? CDs and LPs still both sell by the millions.
I’m a fan of streaming as long as it’s from Tidal or a comparable service. I also have Spotify at home because my wife likes the wider assortment of music. Spotify has an ability to track and find music you’ll like as well. But Spotify doesn’t sound nearly as good as Tidal, so for me, it’s background music through the house system. I’m happy to have it when cleaning. But I’ll never sit down to enjoy my hi-fi with Spotify.
Vinyl is a blessing and a curse. When it’s all good, it’s wonderful. But rarely is it all good.
Magazines have shown (Stereophile, June 2022, p 24) us uber expensive carts whose styli aren’t even mounted with proper alignment on their cantilevers. When this is the case, there isn’t a prayer you’ll get decent sound or balance. If the expensive guys have problems, what do you expect from the Chinese mass market? And guess what? Stereophile won’t tell us which cart it is that has the stylus mounted caca. Good luck man, you’re on your own.
By the way, that’s never a worry with Ortofon, a Danish manufacturer with great TLC. It is almost always a concern from other cartridge vendors. Making tiny devices properly is difficult work.
You might guess that hand made is the best. We’ve found in practice, it’s the least consistent. You need a reliable manufacturing process by a company like Ortofon to get good results.
There is always some tracking error when playing vinyl.
I always hear the bobsled in the groove when playing Chopin. You don’t need to.
Warps…subsonic rumble…LPs cut with the hole not centered… and cleaning? OMG.
I frequently read that so and so bought a new record cleaning machine and his vinyl sounded dramatically better. Or, he paid $10 to have it cleaned with unobtanium solution and now it sounds worlds better.
Oh? Last week you said your vinyl was perfect the way it was. Now, you have to buy an expensive cleaner or pay someone $10 per LP for a deep cleaning? Or it sounds harsh and veiled?!
Did you remember vinyl is encode/decode? Yep, the RIAA phono curve has been in use since dinosaurs roamed the earth. Some companies recognize the heavy handedness of the RIAA (de-emphasis: sloping down at 12k, and down 10dB at 20k) operation and counter it by making their own BETTER phono EQ systems. Some even come with a tuning control because conventional RIAA is such a friggen imprecise mess.
Our hobby is about fun. If you enjoy the madness that goes with all the above- great. Go crazy. Literally.
But for me… no thanks. I only have so much time in life to listen to music. I’m a normal guy. I run, lift a few weights, practice the piano a bit, enjoy watching some sports on TV and spending time
with grand kids. I’m not gonna obsess about Wally Tool alignment, cleaning and computer operations. Get a life already!
I’m going to play music when I have time. And silver discs allow me to do it AND SOUND GREAT. Did you know when you hear a real piano there is no record noise? There aren’t clicks and pops or groove distortion either. You hear the piano from a dead quiet background- no HISS. If you care to listen through all the debris and pretend it’s not there… really?
If you happen to find the perfect record- that’s great! Yet I’m done listening through noise and pretending it’s not there. The only time I will- is when that music is available on LP only.
When you play CDs or SACDs, you insert a disc in player, press play. All your time goes to hearing what you love about the music. What a concept!
If you haven’t heard CDs sound great, you’ve got the wrong gear or poorly mastered discs. Sure, that can happen, just as with LPs or streaming. If the master is weak, we’re stuck. But most CDs ARE well mastered and if you listen to them on SACD30n, you’ll be hearing them at their best, which can be stunning.
CD players are better today- than ever! What NAD makes for $400 is very impressive. You get a nice step up for $850.
But please consider stretching to $3K. The Marantz SACD30n is a legitimate game changer!
At $3k you get the unsurpassed Marantz SACD-30n which is about as good as it gets. We have sold close to a hundred SACD30n’s, many to people who thought they were DONE with silver discs. But when I did a demo and promised they’d love it, and they tried it- they called to thank me.
You can read the details about SACD-30n here.