Just to be clear, I was referring to discs that I bought from Best Buy, not blanks but sealed, recorded CDs for about $10, the kind no one buys anymore. The store-bought CDs I mentioned, Donald Fagen and The Police, would play on my computer, so I could rip them, but they would not play on my stereo system's Marantz CD player. I would have thought my Marantz would be able to play CDs my Mac can't, but it's actually the other way around. Which leads me to wonder what distinguishes one CD player from another besides feature.
I hope that this—failing, new, store-bought CDs—does not happen more in the future. It certainly is a clever way to get people to buy new CD players. But then, most people don't buy separate CD players like I do because they download their music in the form of mp3s.
The old stereo days are over. I'm old school. I still have my vinyl but my turntable is broken—and I still prefer CDs, unless the CD is a remaster. You've probably read about the loudness wars, or whatever they call it. I find it very depressing. Music is being destroyed and so few people seem to mind.
I was looking for a book to discuss how music is recorded, the history, and so on. I found one by Greg Milner but I haven't bought it yet.
