Yeah, “recently remastered” is sadly often a bad thing. As a rule of thumb, the older the CD, the better mastered it is. For this reason, I like to buy used CDs from places like Discogs, and also enjoy combing through my local library which often has some rare old CDs on hand.
Now I’m wondering if I need to get a little CD player again, hook it up to a good amp and make myself a critical listening rig.
No need. I rip everything to FLAC immediately and go from there. On-the-go I actually just use high bitrate VBR MP3s made from the FLAC “masters”.
I think I know where you coming from, but that’s not necessary always true, i.e. Steven Wilson remastered some of YES’s early works; and they sound fantastic to my ears.
The key would be to research and ensure that the new remastered versions uses a good source and that the remastered version is something you enjoy. There are enough remastered versions that just ramp up the loudness and they sound like crap. No reason to re-purchase something like that for your collection.
That’s a fantastic recommendation. Your local library is also a great resource to find new music that you normally wouldn’t listen to. A great way to escape the echo-chambers of Spotify and the like, if you dare to embrace the adventure.
I was wondering about the source. I’m trying to decide about where to purchase and where to store high quality audio.
I’m thinking about a blu ray player through a good DAC and amp as one possible source. The other would be to research and find sources of well mastered music that I can download and store on a drive or the cloud.
I have a large number of CDs but I’m not sure of the mastering behind them.
I’ve not made decisions on how to store and serve music. While I have a lot of vinyl that I will keep as vinyl, I do have CDs also. Some were ripped years ago as 320k MP3, then later as Apple Lossless, FLAC or kept as WAVs. I have a Mac Mini that can do OK as a Rip and Store location, but have really thought about unifying things with a dedicated music server. I sort of like the Wyred4Sound music server, but it also appears that this is where Roon can be a boon.
I like things that I can pay for once, not have as a subscription. So this perches me on the horns of a dilemma. And I do nothing.
Gotcha
I’ve converted my entire music library (CDs) to FLAC files. I store them on a NAS and use Volumio for playback.
NAS > DAC > Volumio > Amp
You may want to check out this discussion over here.
Keep in mind that when you download HD audio tracks it’s important to verify that the service used a high quality master for the HD audio file, otherwise you’re just getting upsampled garbage.
It’s best to enjoy what you have. And then as time progresses and new (good) remasters become available you may decide to revisit a couple of albums that are worth the upgrade. At least that’s my philosophy.
