Now this might seem at odds with the name of this site and the record collecting missions I have attempted to set readers off on, but I have a confession to make; I have rekindled my love affair with the Compact Disc. I still hold the vinyl LP and the 7 inch 45 as the design classics they are, but in a certain kind of mood and with another charity shop sourced 99p extended remastered deluxe edition set in my hand, I can easily form an argument for the CD being the best format to experience music. Not only for its superior sound quality but also for its durability, the range of possibilities it has for re-issues, for offering satisfying collectable packages and its suitability for building home libraries of music. It is also free from the trendy vinyl records hype and is enjoying a moment when great titles can be found for affordable prices.

I have been collecting music for around forty years and will hold my hands up and admit, I fell out of love with CDs for quite a few years. Long enough to upload my thousand plus CD collection into an mp3 library and sell the original items, telling myself I would never miss them and, for a while, I was right.

But then, after a time, some house moves and a few computer replacements, I started to notice holes appearing in what I believed was an indelibly saved library. Albums or tracks that I knew I owned just disappeared. It seems the cloud, whatever that might be, is not as watertight as we are led to believe. Or maybe I should take responsibility, after all when you re-locate, checking that all your mp3 files are neatly packed away is not something you think of, so maybe I cannot blame other technology for my diminishing music collection. But another thing that had begun to frustrate me is the endless re-organising of tracks you have to tackle, seemingly every time you open a computer library of music. Songs appear on albums out of sequence, or certain tracks are separated and appear on another version of that album, minus the other tunes, elsewhere in the library. Cover art is changed seemingly at random. Maybe all this confusion had instilled paranoia for I felt sometimes like the unreachable air bubble our music collections exist in can swap songs on albums, replace them with an inferior live version of the same track or an earlier non-remastered version. Either way regardless of who is to blame, it is a ball of confusion that I have fallen out of love with.

For a while my solution was to go back to vinyl, after all that was where I began in the 1980’s. We like to conveniently overlook that when nearly everyone switched to CD from record, everyone, musicians especially, were excited by this format. Not only was the sound clearer and yes, better than anything ever experienced before, but it was also a more durable format, could hold a lot more music and took up far less space on the shelves, thus enabling collectors to amass bigger libraries.

But somehow, despite fast becoming extinct in the eyes of the majority, the vinyl record began to revive due to a number of factors. Firstly, when internet selling became the main global marketplace there were a lot of record dealers waxing lyrical about the magic of vinyl, the joy of the physical product, the clone like nature of CDs compared to the individual charm of a record (pressing faults and all) and above all the superior sound quality. I bought into all these ideas without inhibition but there are issues that do not, for obvious reasons, get talked about very much.

The one thing about LPs I cannot dispute is they are a better format for cover art. You can get a far greater appreciation of an artistic or conceptual album cover if it is viewed on a twelve-inch piece of card or even better, a fold out gatefold sleeve. But CD covers are hardly the inferior relative they are made out to be, a fold-out booklet has a charm of its own as does a digipak or a nice slipcase. In fact, there are many variants of the CD package and some are superb and furthermore, they look uniformly satisfying when viewed from their spines on a shelf.

But another thing I was personally frustrated with when collecting brand new records (other than the crazily high prices) was the sound quality. The major selling point of a vinyl album, their providing the best possible audio clarity and range, is simply not always true. Where the claim does have some punch is on original, first pressings of albums released from the late fifties through the seventies. If you have a top-quality condition, Mint or Near Mint, copy of an album released in this period the chances are, if played on good equipment, that you will get the best listening experience possible and the sound will come alive in ways you had not imagined. But this statement, I would now argue, only applies to original albums released over that time period and as any collector should be aware, being able to source copies of the most sought-after albums from this period in the best condition is a very expensive hobby. A good investment for sure, but if hearing music is your motivation, you will not be served so well unless you are a lottery winner.

Where more recent albums are concerned, and certainly with anything produced after CDs became the main format, I have never been able to spot any noticeable difference in the sound quality on a record to the CD version. In fact, sometimes the difference is all about the loss of audio quality on an LP or 45. Let them gather dust and the background noise will always be intrusive, still the big issue I have with new records these past thirty years is that many do not appear to have been manufactured with the expectation of being played much, or at all. I have bought some terrible, brand-new pressings that simply do not play properly. I have encountered heavy bass parts that always skip, blemishes in the playing surface invisible to the naked eye and some albums that do not even appear to have been centred correctly, meaning as they rotate the music plays with a totally unlistenable warped wobbling, key bending effect. And part of this I guess is the fault of the consumer, because a lot of people do buy records purely to own the artefact, often never actually playing it, the original purpose of manufacturing these works of art reduced to an afterthought. For fairness’s sake I will add that I did also buy some very good pressings, but never anything that I noticed improved audio over a CD or even a streamed edition.

Records are easily damaged too, one clumsy drop on a turntable or snatch grabbing of an album sleeve with the opening edge facing down, causing the record to drop out, and the chances are that disc will never play right again. There are perils to the preservation of a record everywhere, not merely the hands of a careless user. Leave them too near a radiator or other heat source and they warp, stack them the wrong way for too long and some might dish, any form of manhandling or abuse could cause them to snap; I know marketing on the indestructible nature of CDs was a bit over-the-top and ultimately untrue, but there is actually a lot to be said for owning a physical product that does not get broken so easily. And alongside this tough reality bite on the skin of my vinyl love, I have become positively dewy eyed over the humble compact disc.

The sound is routinely impeccable, the best audio of any recording you could hope to find. They rarely have any wear and tear that prevents them from playing and even if you do encounter the occasional blemish, just taking them out of the player and giving them a wipe with a non-abrasive cloth will fix the issue most of the time. CD re-issues are an absolute collector’s delight, the space on a re-mastered or bonus track laced deluxe edition for additional archive or live material is truly mouth-watering. Fold out digipaks, extensively annotated booklets and near double, triple or even multi disc box set editions have given the world of music aficionados and connoisseurs a format that can cater to their needs, and it continues to function like that today. Re-issue labels often press a vinyl edition for the purists but they cannot eliminate the all important CD version, knowing full well that there is still a marketplace of listeners who love nothing better than to stick a compact disc in their player, kick back for an hour or more and lose themselves in the albums relevant booklet sleevenotes, recording information and deep dive reading materials. I do not think that experience is ever going away either. While the music industry still expresses delight and disbelief at the vinyl revival, why not take advantage of this moment where the CD resurrection is still under the radar and offering a wealth of affordable bargains? I cannot understate my delight at visiting charity shops again with the realistic expectation of finding something brilliant for my (CD) collection.  So, will Fruit Tree Records be re-branded towards CDs? No, the vinyl record and initially the shellac 78rpm is still where it all began, nothing can take that away and the back catalogue stuff featured on this site remains as relevant as new releases. But equally, the thought that in a few years’ time I will have a similarly sized CD collection to the one I had twenty years ago, is pretty damn exciting.