What did you do with your CD collection post-digitization?

[slo100]

I recently completed the long process of digitizing my CD collection and they now rest peacefully in a box.

Did you sell them or keep them?

If sold, did you do it in bulk or one by one?

Thanks!

 

[yucatown]

They're in a sealed box in the attic. It's been at least 3 years since I bought a CD. Between iTunes and Pandora radio, I can find anything I need.

 

[Kappy]

I should sell mine, but I like keeping them as a backup in case I need to re-rip them for any reason. I currently keep them in a few big 300+ CD sleeves/books for easy access, I keep the cases in plastic bins in the basement. I do the same with my DVDs (which I plan to rip to digital some day and do a media server for my home, but have been too lazy, and too cheap to buy the storage). But all this stuff is taking up space, so one day I'm gonna digitize and sell.

I'd personally probably sell individually. It's more work, but you'd make the most money that way.

Good luck,

Dave

 

[MuseCafeChris]

I should sell mine, but I like keeping them as a backup in case I need to re-rip them for any reason.

+1. I keep myCDs in a display case in my living room where my stereo is so I can listen to them there. iPod is for commuting/working out/any other remote application.

Still have yet to buy/download new music from iTunes.

 

[wingwalker]

Switching to CD's is what I did with my album collection post digitization!!!

MP3 players are convenient but even if the CD's are ripped at a high bit rate they still sound worse to me than CD's, which still sound worse to me than albums...it's just more than I am willing to give up, so I haven't.

 

[small axe]

i uploaded many of mine....i have too many..i use them in my car or in a home stereo

 

[whitehall]

Always kept them in boxes in the closet. Back when gas hit 4 dollars I would go to this place every Sat. and sell off some and then go across the street and buy a tank of gas. When gas prices dropped I stopped.

 

[cvansickle]

Mine are still readily available in my study. I use them in the car mostly.

 

[GAD]

I had hundreds of CDs bought from the time CDs were first released.

Many years ago I decided "screw it", digitized them all, and threw them out. I was tired of them taking up space.

Some time after that I discovered three things:

Bit rates matter
Lossless compression
I'm an idiot

I had recorded everything at 128k, not knowing any better. Later I had become pretty deep into headphone-phile listening and for the first time could hear the problems with 128k encoding.

That experience taught me to never store anything in a compressed and/or lossy format. I now store all music in FLAC, shoot all my digital photography in RAW, and continue to shoot with a tape-based HD camcorder. Yeah I consume a lot of disk space but disk is cheap.

When I want or need compression (ipod, web, etc.), then I compress it to my needs while always keeping a master lossless copy somewhere, and another copy offsite.

 

[Rob 62]

I like the idea of loading them into an external drive of their own, but my problem is that I wouldn't have enough real time to monitor all of the rips for digital errors. So - to get rid of the disc, and a year later find that an old favorite (perhaps out of print) sounds like ****? No way. I've sunk a lot of time and money into - a library. That's the way I think of it. To sell it off, piece-meal - I'd never get enough cash to make it worth it.

Currently, there are a number of titles on my hard drive - but I have kept the hard copy. Maybe someday, they will end up in boxes in an attic.

 

[slo100]

Thanks guys.

I ripped mine to MP3 at 192Kbps using iTunes. The quality seems to be good to me.

It seems like most of you are keeping the originals which is probably a good idea. I am in this weird nesting mode and cleaning house of clutter and this giant box of @500 CDs is causing me internal strife.

Maybe this one box can stay for a while.

Thanks for the input. It is interesting to see what everyone is doing.

Bret

 

[A-Bone]

Switching to CD's is what I did with my album collection post digitization!!!

MP3 players are convenient but even if the CD's are ripped at a high bit rate they still sound worse to me than CD's, which still sound worse to me than albums...it's just more than I am willing to give up, so I haven't.

This is me, too.

 

[Guitar Josh]

I thought about selling them, but for the 1-2 bucks I was looking at per disc, if that, I just decided to keep them. Disk space is cheap, yes, but if it fails, that's a problem. Mine are all backed up onto DVDR, but I'm thinking about going to external HD.

 

[MORE BARN]

I am in limbo with it I think...from boxes of LP's stored away in favor of the cassette, from boxes of cassettes stored away in favor of CD's, to Blu-Ray, SACD, DVD-A, HDCD, to iPods & MP3's, etc....

I think I'm just going to stop...maybe just go for a walk in the woods or up a mountain with my dog or something

As far as the music, probably just listen to CD's as long as there are players to play them, and when those go away, I'll just go back to vinyl or something and re-purchase only my favorites or classic albums.

Had enough...

 

[JPF]

I'm with MORE BARN and Neil Young - wait until we come to our senses, and return to good old analogue. Until then, I rely on CDs and LPs - and have jettisoned MP3 files for anything other than use in a pinch.

 

[mrdavek]

You MAY want to consider selling some on Amazon...I just got $50 for an old T.N.T. CD I had

Nice way to make some extra cash for gear!

Dave

 

[jpage]

Bought (2) 1TB external drives, burned about 5000 CDs in lossless format, then sold all the CDs to buy more, do the same thing, repeat, repeat... Like a few have mentioned here--burn in lossless format (iTunes has an option if that's your management software). Storage is too cheap to deal with lossy copies of your stuff--you might not care now, but in ten years when you spend $20,000 on a set of speakers you wil be kicking yourself if all you have are 128 and 192 bit files. ALWAYS have redundant backups on your stuff--hard drives can, and will, fail.

 

[Dasein]

To be fair - I don't think it is technically legal or even in the spirit of the law to rip your CD's then sell them. I always thought the gray area for rips was that it was ok as long as you had the source disk - that the license for the songs was attached to ownership of the original media.

 

[seantk]

I have kept most of my cd's. I put a lot on my computers, but there is a lot more that is not on there. i buy most of my music through itunes, and amazon (it is pretty darn cheap)

when I can't find it on itunes or the local shop. I made the mistake of getting rid of a lot of what I had years ago, and ended up regretting it big time. Luckily, I have found most of it

again. Now I am getting ready to put my record collection in the computer and backup and burn some to cd's

 

[tnvol]

I have them all packed away. No reason to get rid of them.