Nothing can beat a wall of a CD/Cassette/Vinyl collection.

Nothing can beat making a mix tape/CD.

I've got both and prefer vinyl. If I was starting from zero now I would focus on CDs. Not everything is available in every format but I think CDs have the most coverage.

Vinyl is cool and cozy but I couldn't be bothered. It's a bad tech / product overall.

Too much space, too clunky of a tech to not lose interest in a few months and I don't believe there's an audio difference a human ear can notice. So you're just having a bunch of square posters that you sometimes look at - might as well just do posters then.

Hard no. Hauling this shit around and finding a spots for it is not something I would've chosen if I didn't already have the nostalgic attachment.

That being said! Can't lie I do still love it.

I still buy music CDs, and rip them to digital media. CDs are a lot easier to rip to digital media, but vinyl is cooler, but I listen to local music mainly through strawberry media player (or USB stick in a car)

Neither. CDs are only useful as a digital copy and 700MB is a quick download, and many discs can fit as FLAC on a microSD the size of my pinky nail. It might even be cheaper nowadays for them to mass produce 512 MB micro SD cards to put FLAC albums on them. If anybody wanted physical albums. It would be hilarious to just have a QR code on a tiny cardboard envelope.

If we want analog music, which is a cool idea, we should replace vinyl with something better. We can still use an optical laser disc but encoding stereo audio tracks as analog laser etches rather than zeros and ones. That way we could reduce the cost, and increase the quality at the same time. Might even be able to print them on glass for longevity. Then you might have an audiophile quality LP that doesn’t need to be flipped. Also in terms of longevity - an analog laser recording could be reverse engineered and listened to after the apocalypse, while binary CD format is a bit more opaque.

Vinyl. Grew up on the sound

I collect both but have begun focusing more on CDs for their portability, price, and their ease of digitization. I'm actually in the middle of extracting CDs I recently picked up at the thrift store as I type this. I have an MP3 player and I load them on there, keep them on my hard-drive AND a separate back up. I still have CDs from the 90s and have had no issues with them playing or being digitized.

These days I try to buy either DRM free flax files. If I really like the art or the artist in addition to wanting to regularly actually listen to as an album, then I may try to buy vinyl + flac files. If it's at a show I'll buy whatever is available that I can play because at that point it's more about the merch than music. I'm probably going to pass on the wax cylinders and I may think long and hard before buying a cassette.

If I was doing it as a way to acquire music to listen to, CDs, it's easier and more convenient to rip them to a computer, they take up less storage space, and are more tolerant of a bit of neglect.

If I'm just looking to collect something for the sake of collecting something, probably vinyl.

Vinyl, without a doubt. Because it's analog.

CD's are lossless 16-bit/44.1 kHz PCM digital audio. You can already get that in file form. Why would you want digital audio that's stored on media that degrades? It doesn't sound any different than the digital file...it's quite literally (not figuratively literally but literally literally) the exact same data.

Same as I do now.

CDs.

You can rip CDs to digital easily. You can get them cheap at resale shops and garage sales.

I buy and listen to vinyls, but also I moatly only buy them for my top 5 artists, partly for display. I do buy some if Infind them cheap or they are special, but I don't really collect vinyls. They are impractical.

Vinyl is trash coming back to sell to collectors.

If you want to put covers up in a room or something go for it. But for listening to music they are the dumbest shit imaginable.

If I was starting today probably CDs because the price difference is significant. Ive collected vinyl since the 80s though and acquired the bulk of my collection when former vinyl enthusiasts foolishly unloaded their collections for pennies on the dollar to get cds instead. I dont buy many new LPs nowadays and stick to thrift stores and discogs bargain deals.

Depends on what you use it for. I love buying records and listen to them only in a specific way. I listen to records only in the living room with a chill vibe. I enjoy the intentionally of picking a record and turning it over. I lose that for CDs but do enjoy them in the car when I get sick of the radio

CD"s. I'm old enough to have had a vinyl collection before CDs came out. The first CD I bought was Brothers in Arms, the sound was revelatory, ditched my dozen or so LPs

I like the ritual of playing a vinyl, they require intention.

Second hand CDs are very cheap and much easier to rip.

I don't collect either but when I buy something I buy vinyl, they feel more like a physical object.

Vinyls don't corrode over time. We have vinyl from 80 years ago. Still good. We have CDs from 90s that no longer play. And itunes that have completely disappeared unless than 20years.

If I weren't allowed to stream or pirate, then CDs.

If I am, then Vinyl.

CDs for sure but then again I never stopped collecting them. They can be played as is with no loss of audio quality. They are easy to store, and serves as a backup after you have ripped them to a harddrive. So should your hardware fail you can always start over.

There is also a lot of music I might have forgotten about if I only had streamed it, but finding it on my shelf years later gives the music new life again.

Same as I do now, vinyl. If you're listening to CDs, which are digital, you may as well buy your music digitally from Bandcamp or wherever and you have no need for physical media.

CDs also suffer from bit rot so they won't last forever, best way to keep them forever is to rip them, but at that point, again, just buy the music digitally.

Vinyl doesn't give you the best sound quality, it can be annoying to have to flip the record over or change records, but there's something about it being tangible, it's a real thing, you can see the grooves, you don't even need power to play a record. And with care, they'll last a lot longer than a CD.

Vinyl isn't a perfect medium, but that's kinda what makes it so fun and special

CDs, hands down. Never liked vinyls for a myriad of reasons.

Vinyl. If shit hits the fan and there are no music players left I think I might possibly get vinyl to play manually/mechanically somehow.

The main advantage of collecting vinyl for me would be to archive rare releases that never got onto another format.

For example, this vinyl rip i found on yt, has the description:

Vinyl rip of my original 1971 vinyl copy of this classic album. It has the paper-style (B.I.E.M.) label and the matrix numbers are 6397020 1+380 A10 and 6397020 2+380 A13, which are the earliest I have ever seen.

Although not worn, it has not always been treated very well during its forty-one years of existence. I have removed as many pops and clicks as I could without audibly degrading the sound quality and destroying the vinyl sound. To my ears, the final result is pretty close to what a near-mint vinyl copy would sound like. Without the noise reduction and compression (applied to all CD and recent vinyl issues of this album), the album sounds more spacious and livelier.

They're right, it sounds great!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9grRaUpDyNk Serge Gainsbourg, Melody Nelson

Neither. Give me files. I have no use for all that plastic. I have 8 TB of music and growing. Mostly freely traded and doesn't have or need a plastic container anyways.

Vinyl is an environmental mess. PVC with plasticizers and lead as a stabilizer. Heavy to transport, bulky to store. Extremely energy inefficient in making. They degrade the minute you play one.

I used to have a record collection (several hundred at some point, maybe nearly a thousand), I am glad to be done with it. Records are way too short.

CDs. They take up less space. Especially if you throw the casing away and just have the actual CD. I don't have any device that can read either so keeping them usable is not a priority.

I'm aware of the correct interpretation of the question but I found this more amusing.

CDs

Disk rot is a real issue, but I can make ISOs from them and back them up with my current hardware. Records are all fun and a better decor item, but if data preservation is the goal, I need to be able to make my own copies.

It's a tough one because vinyl records are objectivity inferior in every way. However, for some weird reason high quality dynamic masters are used for vinyl records but not CD's. There's no reason they couldn't use dynamic masters for CD's and digital but they don't. Read about the loudness wars if you feel like learning about the subject. If anyone needs tips on CD ripping or anything of that nature feel free to PM me.

If you want the highest quality, lowest cost, and most convenient listening experience (especially portable) then get CDs. If you enjoy the ritual of using the turntable and you also want something that looks good on the wall, get vinyl.

Or do like me and get some of both!

I like both. Vinyl is fun because you have to more actively deal with it, which keeps me engaged with listening.

CDs are good because they are cheap and I grew up in the 90s, so I like the selection. There are some things you just can't get on vinyl. They are also nice because you don't have to flip them.

I had an old receiver so I just picked up a cheap dvd player with OSD to handle playing CDs and it has worked really well. I just switch inputs depending on my mood for maximum nostalgia.

Cassettes.

(My car only has a casette deck.)

I think I'd go for CDs, I could get a blu ray reader to also collect movies

It's up to you.

Vinyl: bigger collectors value (old releases), nice album art, pleases multiple senses at once.

CD: convenient to use, better audio quality (vinyl can come near only if you are willing to spend thousands of dollars on equipment), easy to rip or copy, compact (as the name says)