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Comment by matheusmoreira | Hacker News Reader

Thank god CDs are gone. Their only use these days is to serve as sources for perfect FLAC copies. A flash drive with digital audio files is objectively superior in every way. At least vinyl and cassette have the quality of being analog.

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I much prefer CDs than records. At least you can skip the songs with a remote control, sound quality is far superior than records and the entire thing is compact and lasts forever. Relatively speaking.

Those advantages are specific to digital audio, not CDs. You get the same features if you have a FLAC collection on a flash drive.

What you said is true when compared to analog mediums like vinyl. Even the dust that's sitting on top of the record can color the audio and that's before we even consider the quality of the turntable hardware. People actually perceive vinyl as the better medium because of this.

You're right. That's why I said, "Relatively speaking".

I mostly rely on digital music in various forms, but there is one advantage to vinyl: it removes choice.

It's one of those "paradox of choice" things; the more decisions you have to make, the less happy you are. When listening to a record, I just have to decide to put the record on, and then all choice is removed from me and I just sit back and enjoy the ride. I don't have to decide whether to skip a track or whether to jump from a playlist to a specific song I just thought about; the "would I rather be doing something else?" part of my brain takes a break.

I always found these artificial constraints weird. So the problem is not with the media but with the brain. Then fix the brain problem through self control. Why justify the presence of an inferior medium because of the problem with personal discipline! I know it works on a lot of people but that doesn’t make it more rational.

It’s like keyboards without printed keys for those aficionados who prefer to learn to type without looking down. Just don’t look down, problem solved.

==Then fix the brain problem through self control==

Oftentimes, something is far easier to type than it is to do. If you have a reliable way of implementing self-control this simply, please share it.

For subconscious and things your parasympathetic nervous system does without engaging the brain - We need assistance. For example, when learning how to ride a bicycle, training wheels help until balancing yourself is “learned”.

But things like “I don’t buy junk food because if I do, I’ll eat it right away and gain weight”. This... this is a problem with self control. My point was that justifying records because it forces me to listen to the whole album without skipping is an artificially constructed self imposed problem.

The goal is to do as little mental work while possible while relaxing listening to music. Exercising self control is antithetical to that purpose.

It may not be a brain bug everyone has, but the point is to pick a method of relaxing that doesn't exacerbate it.

There is definitely mental frustration in the brain when I can't skip shitty tracks that I don't resonate with and having to forcefully listen to it. That makes my brain way more agitated than relaxing with the ability to skip tracks.

When everything works, I am relaxed. When I am artificially constrained, I am not relaxed.

As much as I liked CDs, they don't last forever. I've lost a few already, due to damage to the reflective layer, probably from small errors during manufacturing. Bad handling can of course damage them too.

CDs have two layers of error correction, and with special equipment you can monitor the Block Error Rate.

CD players attempt simple interpolation to hide errors, so the sound has started to degrade long before you start getting clicks and skips. Clock jitter is also an issue.

I started ripping my CD collection to FLAC in the mid-2000s, because it was obvious that ripped FLACs were cleaner and more accurate than the audio from my not-cheap CD deck. Now all my music is on a NAS in a spare bedroom with RAID and a separate occasional manual backup to yet another drive.

I have no interest in vinyl in at all, or in analog nostalgia, or in having yet more stuff to manage in my space. I spent too many hours moving huge boxes of vinyl around and trying to hear music through crackles and pops. So I wouldn't care if every LP and turntable in the world disappeared overnight.

While a lot of vinyl fans would be very upset if this happened, I wouldn't be one of them.

Indeed. As a medium CDs outdo vinyl in every way. There is no point using vinyls if CDs are available other that wanting to 'play' with a turntable like in "the olden days".

I can listen to the exact same record my mom listened to 50 years ago, complete with her initials on the sleeve. I can’t do that with CD’s. Since she passed, this has taken on even more meaning.

A lot of people also love the large format artwork on the album cover and sleeve. Playing a record while studying the liner notes was a favorite activity of mine in the olden days.

Artwork is the only thing that vinyl really wins at, but today you can find more information about any artist or project on the web.

I sometimes wonder about selling limited edition physical artwork off the back of music projects.

If somebody has gone to the effort and expense to listen to a physical record, they probably aren't going to want to scroll around on their phone to see digital liner notes. The physicality of it all is a big part of the appeal of vinyl.

Sure, it's larger than CDs. But there used to be the same with CDs, albeit in a smaller format.

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