this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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I prefer dedicated digital players over physical media, for instance, a FLAC player with a digital library over CDs, but I'm glad to see this trend catching up. Anything that gets people building their own collections, escaping algorithms and escaping DRM/streaming is a huge win in my book.
Physical media scratches, rots, burns down, etc. They also require a lot of space, and you can't have it all with you easily.
My FLAC library is got the same or better audio quality, I can backup and copy in seconds for myself or friends, I can carry everything, or just curated playlists, with the toggle of a button, and I can preserve them on any medium I find - mechanical HDs, SD cards, SSDs, etc.
Though I am very curious about vinyl...
I recently revived my record player and CD player and I've been enjoying three things:
What I don't enjoy is that records in particular are ridiculously expensive now. I don't know who can afford them. So I'm stuck with the records and CDs of my youth and whatever I can find in bargain bins.
I do also use Qobuz and... other means of obtaining music.
But... those other storage mediums can also get damaged, burn, rot, etc and are also less portable (excluding the SD cards anyway).
Nothing a decent backup strategy can't mitigate. Also less portable? Between the massive storage available on digital audio players and using jellyfin with something like symphonium digital audio is massively more portable.
You have a point except the portability. A single USB drive is infinitely more portable than a large cd collection.
Sure can. You know what else they can do? Instantly and cleanly copy their data to any other storage device, they can even do so automatically every day!
Throw a self hosted Jellyfin server in the mix, and you can access your entire FLAC library from any device you want! Your friends can listen at the same time, if you want to give them logins.
Your hard drive can be erased in many ways. And soon you wont be able to afford them or be allowed to own them.
Vinyl lasts forever. Its only damaged if you play it 😐
They make record players that use lasers so they don’t slowly wear down the grooves
Those dont work great and are no longer made,
Those never worked well. They pick up every tiny bit of dust and scratch, far more than a stylus does. If you keep your stylus in good condition, changing it regularly, and set up your tonearm correctly, it shouldn't harm the records.
I'm willing to bet my main SSD, my backup HDD, my FLAC player's SD card, and my laptop SSD all carrying the same file are going to be more durable than a piece of plastic.
Sure, but that's a lot of work and worry to keep all those backups going and syncd...ugh. I hate dealing with it. Takes hours of my life. Now, you're probably an IT admin or programmer like most people on Lemmy, but I don't have 13 hours to sit on a computer and troubleshoot why Borg won't work on my restic fluffywhatever. I'm sure you'll say "its easy, justtttt..." Yeah, its not easy, I've lived it.
And in the end, you have a computer hooked to your stereo, the one place I'm trying to escape the constant computing.
A CD works just fine and I can burn another physical copy if I want it.
I'm glad your setup works for you! I have a nas packed full of stuff as well but I rarely use it for the reasons listed. Its a hassle.
I think it took me 15 minutes to first install SyncThing and Vorta? I literally haven't worried about this for the last two years
I'm a biologist :) (though to be fair, mastering in bioinformatics, but this setup came first!)
My stereo is a Gradiente from the 70s, no computers there. My portable player does connect to a computer to sync sometimes... but I do this when charging, so out of mind.
"Ooh I wanna listen to [song], let me just....find the CD....put the CD in the tray...find the track number...skip to that track...wait for CD player to scan and start..."
FLAC is everything good about CDs minus the headache. Sure you can't physically hold the liner notes but it's not like that hasn't been digitized, too!
I only listen to albums all the way through when using CDs and vinyl, so track search doesn't matter to me. CDs are the pinnacle of digital physical media for audio. Large enough, copyable, portable, not too big to store.
But the rest still applies so in what ways are a CD better than FLAC? Flash drives take up even less space and can hold hundreds of albums. Arguably even more "portable" because disc drives aren't common anymore
Its much less user friendly. I hate the permeation of computers in every aspect of life. When i want to listen to music, I turn on my stereo stack with turntable, 5 disc changer, and reel to reel. So relaxing. Computers have too much going on, updates, notifications, crashes, hard drives dying, blargh. I deal with that all day long. A record or CD is the fastest way to enjoyment without distraction.
I should mention I don't really listen to music outside my home as it will never sound as good as my home speakers. Dynamic music sounds like trash in cars and headphones will never be as good as speakers for spatial recognition. I don't even have wireless earbuds.
You don't need a computer at all, there are dedicated media players (yes they're still "computers" but not PCs with updates and other stuff on it)
True! Maybe someday I'll get one. But I don't need more devices
Too short.
A decent music library would require thousands of CDs, it would be a huge hassle. Why deal with that when you can just copy all of that to one hard drive?
Because that's not cool.
Because its information overload (name even 50 albums and the songs on them. Humans dont need thousands of albums. Our brains are not meant for this much information. You can't appreciate 1000 albums)
It has no resale value. And if that HDD dies or you die and your family doesn't know how to use it or how to decrypt it, its useless.
I don't consider HDDs physical media per se. No one is handing down hard drives or selling them at yard sales. I can play my great grandpas 1890 shellac records. Think a hard drive will be able to do that? Hell no.
Ok. But I can touch mine ... they seem very physical.
Because it's easier to just copy the data to someone else's drive, no need to physically hand it over. Also you can still keep the CDs after copying them to another medium.
That seems more like a personal problem than a technical one.
Have you looked at HDD prices recently? You can definitely resell them. The ones I bought 3 years ago now cost double the price! And all data should be backup anyway so you don't lose anything on a disc failure. And the last point can be addressed by either just not encrypting your drive or leave the proper instructions behind.
All in all those are minor inconveniences compared to dealing with thousand of CDs.
HDDs are not designed to last very long. Neither are SSDs. That's one reason to prefer dedicated physical media.
You can still keep the CDs around for archive purposes, but to me CDs are no longer a viable option for actual media playback.
If you spend a lot of time sitting next to a CD player they're still OK for now. For music on the move, not so much. And when the player breaks it will be hard to replace. So they're definitely not perfect.
Even if you're at home and do have a CD player it's just not practical. Sure, if you only listen to a handful of CDs that's workable.
But my current music collection would require 1400+ CDs .. and good luck finding a specific song in that pile, even if you do know the exact album it's on. It's so much better to just have a searchable library.
Ssds die randomly without warning. Ask me how I know. Then worrying about all your backups, are they going to work? Are those drives failing? Its a huge headache for a real world person that doesn't spend 24/7 talking about Linux on Lemmy.
All your points about HDDs being physical assume you have computer knowledge to know what to do with a HDD.
There's USB ones, but that's what your limited to when it comes to casual users who just want it to work.
Everyone old enough knows how to handle a CD.
Even if you don't use a USB one, you basically just put the thing in the slot and start up the machine, maybe it needs some formatting. It's not brain surgery. Again, it still easily beats dealing with unmanageable number of CDs.
Actually, more and more people are too young to know how to handle CDs these days.
"Put the thing in the slot".
Which slot? Where?
"Formatting it"
Format a drive? What's that?
"Its nor brain surgery".
Your assuming a tech literacy that simply doesnt exisit in the general populace.
This is lemmy. They think every person on earth has a homelab, solely run Linux, only use social media in the fediverse, and host their own matrix server.
They have no idea what real life is like!
CDs and record beat hard drives hands down. Not every damn thing needs a computer attached to it. My home listening setup sure doesn't.
The one shaped like the thing ...
Depending on your setup it will even promt you do do this, all you have to do is click a couple of dialogs. Or lookup like a 5 step guide on the internet.
I think I'm making a very reasonable assumption about tech literacy here ... yours might just be below the general populace.
your thinking the average as the mean.
I'm meaning average to be 20th percentile.
meaning "most" people where your average would only include half of all people.
my favourite park ranger quote was talking about why bear proof bear garbage containers weren't better. The answer was along the lines of there's a siginificat overlap between cleaver bears, and not so cleaver people.
you have to account for more than average, you have yo account for below it, so that its accesaible to more than 50% of people.
Everything you just said is a HUGE amount more work than my shelf of CDs and just taking one out and popping it in my stereo. Plus then I have the art and lyrics there. No screens.
Nothing beats physical media for simple enjoyment.