Originally Posted By: AusTexRocker
I admit that I do copy my discs to an SDHC card at 192bps for listening to in the car. The card plugs right in to the head unit in dash. It does beat the hell out of hauling my precious discs around everywhere and sounds just fine for driving around. However, when sitting in my listening room that format is unacceptable. And like mentioned above, I worry about my discs being damaged too. Many are out of print, rare, and very expensive. A $200 plus disc does not come out during the party, I assure you. But then, at the party, who really cares about SQ? It's just filler noise for the background in most cases isn't it? In that scenario, the streaming library is perfect. I myself spent far more time in critical listening sessions than in party time where convenience would be preferable. Both camps have their merits but the fact the industry can dictate how I enjoy what is probably my most favorite passtime is disturbing to me.


I've scratched more than a few CDs in my car, a handful of very prized ones too, up until about 2003 when I noticed that some would miss-track and stutter when playing back on my home hi-fi gear. I have an Alpine CD player in the car but when the suspension of a car CD player is weakened after countless hits on the road caused by potholes and cracks (we hold the distinction of having the roads with the most of potholes up here blush), well then your CDs take hits from the reading lens and you can end up with some really nasty scratches and whitish scrapes. I've had to buy an optical disc resurfacing machine to treat some CDs.

Although I intend to hold on to the actual CD discs, I want to put everything I can on a NAS compressed with FLAC. As for my SACDs, unless I can some day rip them and put them on a NAS too, I'll have to keep on using my Oppo BDP-83.

What's worse about the music industry is that they're trying to push on the market an inferior MP3 format that cost them much less to distribute through downloads and you don't even have a physical media. You can often buy up an actual CD these days for less than the cost of the downloads. If you loose your portable player or the hard drive on your HTPC or NAS crashes and you don't have valid backups, well then you're screwed. The music industry doesn't care, they just figure you'll back back what you lost, very disturbing indeed.