A cd is a digital file. Your cd-player is "digital equipment"

A DVD is a digital file. Your DVD-player is "digital equipment"

Personally, I moved to ripping my cd's and so forth about fifteen years ago. My audio files for work were digital and therefore on cards and hdds already, so it wasn't a big step.

I dislike cd-covers and the like and consider them dust collectors. They also tend to break.

The cds themselves, well, I sure don't miss using them. I rip them, and that's usually that. They're never retrieved again from storage.

I like being able to find whatever music I want to hear, fast and easy by typing in the search field.

I like being able to sort the music by whatever tag I want (artist, album, mood, year, genre, whatever).

I like being able to make playlists.

I like being able to browse from the couch or chair.

I like being able to easily bring whatever and however much I want with me, giving me a choice depending on what mood I'm in five hours later or three days later.

I like being able to not be careful of scratches constantly

I like being able to email a file if necessary (no, it's not illegally sharing).

Btw., none of my music or audio is in lossy formats such as MP3, MP2, or MP4/AAC. Everything is either lossless (FLAC, mostly) or BWF-files (wav).

You do not need to do anything, if you are happy with what you are doing! :)

Once you rip all your CD's into digital format on a hardrive like a beomedia / beosound 5, you will understand the appeal. It is all instant, versatile and movable. It's all at your fingertips, and MOTS on the BS5 is very very good.

Cd's are absolutely lovely and the nostalgia of using old media is great fun, but it is impractical in comparison once you become used to having all your music there in an instant. Your music collection can grow and grow and grow! :)
(just be sure to rip the music properly at a good bit rate.)

This all being said, i still have a hankering for a BeoSound 9000, but i couldn't go back from using my mac as the hub of music.

Sounds to me like you don't want to change a thing, but you have nothing to lose trying it.

I don't think you are the prime candidate for an iPod or portable music player.

Owning an iPod or an MP3 player does not obligate you to wear headphones or earbuds to use it with. I do use earbuds very much but I also have an iPod dock sitting right on top of my BeoMaster 4500 which I probably use even more.

I use my iPod for reasons of portability and storage. Being a 19 year old college student, its perfect. The biggest "pro" would be having all of you're music with you all of the time.

An iPod also really advantages those who are constantly adding music to their collection especially piece by piece, one song at a time. I buy a new song I heard on Radio 1, flip on the lap top, buy it on iTunes and its playing in a matter of minutes. You seem content with a fixed library so no worries there.

With an iPod or such like, you can take your music to a friend's house, or use it to entertain yourself during your commute.

Give it a go!

Agree totally with the sentiment behind Bentleyman's post.

I've posted here on the forum before about my distaste for the way in which music seems to be moving from a physical storage medium that is owned by an individual, to an electronic storage medium where the 'product' does not physically exist in any commonly understood sense of the word. I read recently a post by Soundproof where he summed up the difference between an analogue LP and digital CD very well, and I do take the point that there is a fundamental difference in the way the music is stored on these media, but for me the pleasure in listening to a whole album is that you can take the product from its sleve or case and read the album notes whilst the first track is playing.

I did once rip all my albums into iTunes, but to be honest I'd much rather put a CD or an LP on and listen to that. When I pick up a book I don't read random chapters, and I feel the same about music to be honest. I have an iPhone but haven't bothered to transfer any fiels from iTunes to it. My Beosound 2 gets used sparingly. I'd just much rather sit comfortably and listen to a piece of work in its entirety as the artist intended, than bugger about creating playlists or thinking 'which one of the 1000s of songs I own would I like to listen to next?'!!!

j0hnbarker wrote:

I did once rip all my albums into iTunes, but to be honest I'd much rather put a CD or an LP on and listen to that. When I pick up a book I don't read random chapters, and I feel the same about music to be honest.

You can listen to whole albums even if it's ripped to your harddisk. Gapless even for those operas and classical pieces.

But, I often listen to two or three numbers from, say, Nick Cave, from a single album, then skip to another album and listen to two or three songs from him and so on. At other times, I choose to listen to whole albums, but let's face it, unless it's made to be "a whole", seldomly is a it worth listening to a whole album from one end to another (some of Trent Reznor's products are more of an exception proving the rule, and operas and classical music is in a category of themselves. It's like a movie in my book).

Speaking of books, I have just bought myself a Sony Daily Edition. It's an excellent way to easily have many, many books with you without all the weight, and without all the dust or the numerous yellow Post-Its with notes sprouting like it was organic yellow growth determined to escape from the stronghold of the binding.

j0hnbarker wrote:

I have an iPhone but haven't bothered to transfer any fiels from iTunes to it. My Beosound 2 gets used sparingly. I'd just much rather sit comfortably and listen to a piece of work in its entirety as the artist intended, than bugger about creating playlists or thinking 'which one of the 1000s of songs I own would I like to listen to next?'!!!

You don't have to. You can select albums, just like picking a cd or vinyl from the shelves.

I have a relatively extensive (maybe 400) CD collection and have ripped quite a lot of it into Digital Format and I also use Spotify On my iPod touch plugged into an iPod dock) where I don't have to rip otr buy the music at all, I just pay £10 a month.

Firstly there is no compulsion to go digital if you don't want to. At home I listen to my CD's extensively ( and occasionally LP's) but I find having a digital copy of my music useful for several reasons.

Due to a change in personal circumstances I divide my time between the family house and a flat. The music in digital format can travel with me so my music is where I am, while each CD is in one location or the other.

There is no either/or here. I can and do listen to the CD versions as I do like having the physical product and the are ultimately better quality, having the music digitally is an alternative not a replacement.

With Spotify I can listen before I buy and access music that simply cannot be bought any more except by playing collectors prices. (this particularly applies to Vintage Jazz and Blues). If I really like something I will buy it on CD if it's available.

I do listern to music on the move. Many new cars have the facility to plug your iPod in and listening to music at my desk when I need to zone out distractions, or on the train to work  is part of the working day .

For me, it is becoming a little bit like the move from vinyl to CD. While I recognised  at an intellectual level that vinyl sounded better (especially when compared to some of the very early CDs/Players) and was more enticingly packaged I reached a point when I wasn't listening to vinyl much and the turntable ended up in the loft, and I can see that day coming for my CD's just not for a while.

Simon

Electrified wrote:

j0hnbarker wrote:

I did once rip all my albums into iTunes, but to be honest I'd much rather put a CD or an LP on and listen to that. When I pick up a book I don't read random chapters, and I feel the same about music to be honest.

You can listen to whole albums even if it's ripped to your harddisk. Gapless even for those operas and classical pieces. 

j0hnbarker wrote:

I have an iPhone but haven't bothered to transfer any fiels from iTunes to it. My Beosound 2 gets used sparingly. I'd just much rather sit comfortably and listen to a piece of work in its entirety as the artist intended, than bugger about creating playlists or thinking 'which one of the 1000s of songs I own would I like to listen to next?'!!!

You don't have to. You can select albums, just like picking a cd or vinyl from the shelves.

I know all this. I'm not a Luddite who shuns the modern world and lives in a yurt with a solar panel and some fennel tea for company. I just choose to take pleasure in handling physical media such as LPs, books, etc., and I find storing music on a hard-drive soulless and devoid of any pleasure whatsoever. I can use my mobile phone if I want to tell the time, but I'd much rather have my Breitling on my wrist to do it for me. The iPhone is more accurate and doesn't need adjusting every other day...you either get it or you don't.

j0hnbarker wrote:

I know all this. I'm not a Luddite who shuns the modern world and lives in a yurt with a solar panel and some fennel tea for company. I just choose to take pleasure in handling physical media such as LPs, books, etc., and I find storing music on a hard-drive soulless and devoid of any pleasure whatsoever. I can use my mobile phone if I want to tell the time, but I'd much rather have my Breitling on my wrist to do it for me. The iPhone is more accurate and doesn't need adjusting every other day...you either get it or you don't.

I get it. I have a pretty good watch too, as well as a pocket watch, and I use a fountain pen when taking notes (I'm a journalist).

So I do get that one want some "feeling" with an actual product, but trying to pretend there's rationality behind it makes me want to adress it. Claiming that people listento cd's because the quality is better is nonsensical as you can rip a bit-perfect copy. The same goes for "listeneing to albums from one end to another" and so on, because that's possible too.

If people prefer to listen to vinyl because they like the rituals associated with it, that's fine with me, I will just disagree when that sort of people claim that the audio quality is better, that there are more dynamic range with vinyl and other such nonsensical claims.

Electrified wrote:

If people prefer to listen to vinyl because they like the rituals associated with it, that's fine with me, I will just disagree when that sort of people claim that the audio quality is better, that there are more dynamic range with vinyl and other such nonsensical claims. 

I didn't make any claims that the quality is better, or that there was any rationality behind my personal preferences. You have conflated audiophile arguments together with what I was saying, so in that sense I don't really understand the point you're making.