Vinyl vs. CD vs. Cassette?

[WildRanger]

What do you prefer for listening music and why?

[cramx3]

CD, simple and has great audio quality.  However, digital is the real answer these days for the same reasons.

[SwedishGoose]

CD so that I have a physical copy and can read the lyrics while listening.
However, I seldom listen to the CDs as I have them all ripped to mp3 and put on my smartphone.
That way I can always play whatever I like or make random selections however I like.

[The Walrus]

Although I do almost all of my listening through digital means these days (a stereo in the car with bluetooth and aux capabilities is one of the best things to have), I buy CDs because they're easy to move, are of great quality, and still contain all that I look for in a physical package. I own a few vinyls but vinyl is too expensive for me to buy when I already can barely afford the CDs I purchase, and cassette... lolno.

I mostly buy CDs out of principle these days, rip them, put them on the shelf, very occasionally pull one out to listen in the car but like I said a bluetooth/aux stereo is a godsend.

[Nick]

Vinyl v. CD is a debate to be had, and for me each has a time and place. Cassettes offer nothing of value in comparison, not even sure why they're included here.

[Grappler]

CD, but I've moved on from that format.  I'll buy one from my all time favorite band, but that's it. 

I'm 100% digital - just out of storage space for my cd collection.  There's no point in buying cd's to rip them to my computer and keep them in a bin in the basement.  At home, I can't remember the last time I listened to an actual CD in a CD player.  Probably in 2010, just before I ripped my entire collection into iTunes.  I do all of my listening digitally, either on the computer or on my phone.

[Crow]

CD is by far the most convenient & as well gives the best uninterrupted listening experience. The only reason you'd buy a cassette at this point is for retro cred though like I don't get that one at all

[Tick]

8 track tape. Nothing better than having a ripping guitar solo fade out and then start over on another track. Priceless!

[ChuckSteak]

Vinyl.

[Stadler]

8 track tape. Nothing better than having a ripping guitar solo fade out and then start over on another track. Priceless!

haha.  Gotta love when a 3:45 second song comes in two parts. 


For me, CD.   I have something like 28,000 songs on my iPod and maybe 50 are not on a CD somewhere in my basement. 

[Cool Chris]

Will still buy CDs when they are 1) new releases from my favorite artists, or 2) when I am backtracking with a newly discovered band and I can get previous albums for cheap.

Trying to think the last cassette I bought. The last cassette I remember loving was Duran Duran's Arena. I didn't have many cassettes growing up, and when I got old enough to begin buying stuff with money from my paper route* CDs were becoming more prevalent.

Never bought a vinyl album. Can't imagine that changing anytime soon.

Just saw Best Buy will stop selling CDs in July.


*A paper route was a job some of us old timers had when we were kids. We would deliver newspapers** to homes for money. It was the most profitable job I've ever had when it came down to wage per hours worked.


**Newspapers are periodic publication sold by news outlets, featuring stories about politics, sports, finance, and business. They also featured comics, crossword puzzles, and other leisure activities.

[The Walrus]

I remember when I started checking out my local Best Buy for CDs, I was surprised at the selection. This was about 10 years ago. There were 4-5 aisles of CDs, with some particularly interesting picks (they even had Underworld by Symphony X after it came out, in 2015!). Over the years it got pitifully small. Just a few months ago I went in and picked up Judas Priest's new album... the entire CD selection is down to maybe half a row of shelves, including all the throwaway 'greatest hits' and other compilation albums. Very sad.

[dparrott]

Vinyl is great for being colored and larger artwork, but it's not as portable.  I don't have time to sit around and listen to it.  I listen to everything in my car, so CD or digital wins. 

[seasonsinthesky]

Vinyl and cassette for me. I never buy CDs anymore.

[Indiscipline]

The best music I've got is on vinyl, while cd's seem unable to stay functional for more than two years in my house.

Digital supports saved my life and my loved ones'.

Cassettes' existence was justified only by virtue of cars and mixtapes.

[Stadler]

The best music I've got is on vinyl, while cd's seem unable to stay functional for more than two years in my house.

Digital supports saved my life and my loved ones'.

Cassettes' existence was justified only by virtue of cars and mixtapes.

Well, early on I didn't buy in to the "they're indestructible" nonsense, so I always treated my CDs as if they were vinyl.   The first three CDs I ever bought - Rush Power Windows, Marillion Misplaced Childhood, and Deep Purple Perfect Strangers, I still have.  Well, I have Rush and DP; I upgrade the Marillion for the 2-CD re-release.   Power Windows still plays perfectly.  The fourth - Dire Straits Brothers In Arms - still plays perfectly as well.   (That's all I remember, and it's not as OCD as it sounds; I bought the three with the stereo my grandma bought me for my birthday/college present, and I remember DS because it was DDD, and the songs were significantly longer on the CD than the vinyl.)

[Fritzinger]

Vinyl, definitely vinyl for me.

[ErHaO]

Vinyl.

I mostly listen to streaming/digital downloads, but I enjoy owning vinyls more than CD's. I use them as artwork on the wall and the more limited (in terms of options) listening experience actually leads to me listening to the entire albums  when I do take the time to use my vinyls. I am a person that tends to skip too much when using digital or CD.

Furthermore, vinyls saved our recordstores over here. They were slowly disappearing until the vinyl resurgence actually led to many stores popping up here and there.





Also, in regards to durability, in some climates disc rot is definitely a problem for (older?) CD's.  Not many people pay attention to the possibility of disc rot, but I can confirm it is real and you should handle and store your disc accordingly. I have had some CD were holes appeared and the eventually stopped working. Then again, vinyls obviously also have limited use before quality will deteriorate. But since I mostly listen digitally, that problem is not that significant for me.

[Phoenix87x]

I've always disliked cassette. I never liked having to fast forward and rewind to get to the song I wanted.

For vinyl, I don't like the non-portability of it.

Ultimately I would rather just have MP3s, but if I had to pick, it would be CDs. I remember it blowing my mind that I could pick the song I wanted to hear and I didn't have to turn anything over. Convenience is the most important thing to me.

[lordxizor]

Why the heck is cassette an option, but not digital? I stream everything through Google Play music these days or get the CDs from the library. I haven't purchased a digital download or physical album in years.

Never understood the love for vinyl. Who has time to sit down at home and listen to a full album anymore? For me I listen to 95% of my music at work or in the car.

[KevShmev]

Cassettes' existence was justified only by virtue of cars and mixtapes.

Pretty much.

We used to have a blast making mixed tapes of our favorite bands to listen to in the car.

Nowadays, where you can just throw everything on your phone, that isn't as fun or challenging. 

[Phoenix87x]

Why the heck is cassette an option, but not digital? I stream everything through Google Play music these days or get the CDs from the library. I haven't purchased a digital download or physical album in years.

Never understood the love for vinyl. Who has time to sit down at home and listen to a full album anymore? For me I listen to 95% of my music at work or in the car.

You are reading my mind.

I am definitely not going to sit down on a couch or chair and just sit there still and listen to a vinyl album all the way through. Its not going to happen. I also primarily listen to music while in the car, at work, or if I am actively working on things at home. The key word actively doing things.

And give me digital or give me death. I am done with physical media. It can all disappear tomorrow for all I care.

[Sacul]

Digital always for me, I only buy CDs of albums I can't get in FLAC files, and Vinyl rips when the other formats are compressed as hell.

[pg1067]

When I turned 14, I got a combo turntable/cassette deck/8-track player.  I started buying some of each medium.  I quickly stopped buying 8-tracks because of having songs cut in half and the inability to rewind.  I eventually gravitated to vinyl over cassettes, primarily for convenience, although I copied all my favorite vinyl onto cassette for the car.  Once CDs came out, they offered the best of all worlds.  No skipping/crackling/popping, the ability of vinyl to put the "needle" down wherever you want, and portability.  The recent resurgence of vinyl makes ZERO sense to me.  I'd rather have 8-track make a comeback.

[TAC]

When I turned 14, I got a combo turntable/cassette deck/8-track player.

Yeah, same here, except mine had a dual cassette.

  The recent resurgence of vinyl makes ZERO sense to me.

Yup. ZERO sense.

[SwedishGoose]

It makes no sense to me
Yeah, oh yeah
It makes no sense to me

To live like the vinyl man
To put down the needlepoint
To listen to the pop and crack
It makes no sense to me

[Dublagent66]

My new 2015 Camaro ZL1 didn't even come with a CD player when I bought it.  All those choices in the poll are outdated as far as I'm concerned.

[KevShmev]

My new 2015 Camaro ZL1 didn't even come with a CD player when I bought it.  All those choices in the poll are outdated as far as I'm concerned.

Tell me about it.  I've been doing a little car shopping lately, since I am thinking of getting a new car, and was dismayed to learn that most new cars don't come with CD players anymore.

[Ben_Jamin]

I still buy cds so I have the album in my possesion, while ripping them in Apples lossless format. I used to make cd mixes, so i have a lot of those, to have more variety when i could listen my CD player in school.

[Cool Chris]

I have probably said this elsewhere but I bought a new 2017 Civic last September. Took it for two test drives and it wasn't until the day after I brought it home when I went to work did I ask "where the hell is the CD player?"

Now that I have ripped all my CDs and organized my digital music better have I appreciated the advantages to a digital collection.

[PetFish]

Call me crazy but lately I've been feeling nostalgic and wanting to get back into cassettes and have a little retro display of them on my wall.  I donated mine years ago so I currently have none.

If I can free up some disposable income and display space I'm also thinking about getting into vinyl.  They were dying just as I started getting old enough to be able to listen to and appreciate music that wasn't my parents so I have no vinyl either.  I *do* remember having a few cool LPs, though, but they're totally gone now and I don't think I ever had more than 20.

Anyone remember the Columbia House Record & Tape Club?  One of the very first pyramid scams and, yep, I was in it.  It was, like, 12 tapes for a penny and that's how they got ya.

[Kwyjibo]

CD or digital for me. I still buy CDs from my favorite bands or when the digital download isn't much cheaper. If digital is 9.99 and CD is like 10.99 I buy the CD to have the lyrics and the artwork.

And quoting myself from another thread:

I had about 150 vinyls in my collection when I slowly made the transition to cd. The handling is just so much more comfortable, I don't miss vinyls. I wore some records literally thin. They all got scratches along the way and the needle started to skip. Don't need that anymore.

The bigger artwork was nice, but then the cheaper records had just white sleeves, no lyrics, no information, that sucked big time.

A lot of people claim that vinyls have a better, warmer sound, that may be so, but I don't hear it.

Vinyl was nice, but it has run its course imo. Nowadays it's for collectors and nostalgia reason, but it's far from being a mass medium.

[The Curious Orange]

The original generation of CDs back in the 80s were often just ripped from whatever source they could find. In many cases, the vinyl did sound better than the CD. This is why there was such a market for remastered CDs. Vinyl has a much wider frequency range and a much warmer tone, but the latter was frequently down to the quality of the systems used, with separate amps and speakers. Many CD players were tiny, tacky, cheap horrible things that couldn't reproduce the limited range that was on the CD.

Old vinyl records were mastered by engineers who knew their stuff. These days anyone can master a CD an their laptop, and the "Loudness War" didn't help. Nowadays vinyl pressings are taken from digital masters, so even that analogue warmth that was the hallmark of vinyl has been lost - frankly, there's no point

A well produced, well mastered CD on a quality hi-fi system sounds better than vinyl any day of the week. But vinyl sounds better than a badly mastered CD on a cheap and nasty CD player.

Cassettes were a horrible medium with no advantages - they used to warp and stretch and wear out and get chewed up in the machine. Thank God they died a death.

And yes, the lack of a CD player in new cars makes me feel old too 

[Kwyjibo]

A well produced, well mastered CD on a quality hi-fi system sounds better than vinyl any day of the week. But vinyl sounds better than a badly mastered CD on a cheap and nasty CD player.

But back then not everyone had a good sound system, most of us (at least me and a lot of friends I know) had a cheap and nasty record player when we were young and the subtleties of a good production and mastering were sometimes lost because of that.

And yes, the lack of a CD player in new cars makes me feel old too 

Yeah, wtf, cds aren't out of print yet. And while I have everything ripped and on my phone or usb-drive, my girls still have a lot of cds they want to hear when we use the car. So now I have to rip their cds also.

[The Curious Orange]

But back then not everyone had a good sound system, most of us (at least me and a lot of friends I know) had a cheap and nasty record player when we were young and the subtleties of a good production and mastering were sometimes lost because of that.

That was kind of my point - you can say "Vinyl was better than CD" or "CDs are better than vinyl"  - it's all about what vinyl on what system, versus what CD on what system.