How big is your cd collection?

[ninetynine]

Curious to know other member's collecting / buying habits. My collection is quite small but growing, i've built a pretty decent starter system over these past years so now I could focus on actually listening to music!. I have about 110 cd's and 50 lp's I started to purchase music cds 4 years ago and i'm still at a small amount. I'm really impressed how some people could reach the 1000 mark, so how often do you buy cd's , and how big has your collection got over the years?

[Wireworm5]

I try to buy 1 or 2 cds a month and 1 movie. But I often end up with 3 or 4 cds and no movie. I am somewhat restrained as I am still paying for equipment upgrades. But now that I am finished upgrading except for the Bryston cd player when it becomes available. I'll be purchasing alot more music when funds are available sometime next year.
500 cds- approx.
25 concert dvds
200 cassettes- which I plan to transfer to cd someday
60 movies

[JoeE SP9]

I've been collecting recorded music since 1967. I still have the first LP I bought and it's still playable. I have >2500 LP's now. I bought my first CD ~1984 when CD's were introduced. I have >1500 now. I also have several hundred DVD's, cassettes, RtoR's and VHS (Beta also) tapes.:cool:

[bobsticks]

I average around a dozen cd purchases a week, although it's usually feast or famine. For instance, this week I'll be lucky to grab anything because of a time consuming project at work. Two weeks ago I snagged 29 in a single day. Basically, I rarely come home empty handed. I lost count several months ago but at the time I was just over 1200 discs.
DVDs are a different story. I might buy two or three a month. While I have over 400 it is just not the priority.

[Feanor]

Curious to know other member's collecting / buying habits. My collection is quite small but growing, i've built a pretty decent starter system over these past years so now I could focus on actually listening to music!. I have about 110 cd's and 50 lp's I started to purchase music cds 4 years ago and i'm still at a small amount. I'm really impressed how some people could reach the 1000 mark, so how often do you buy cd's , and how big has your collection got over the years?

Today I regularly buy a modest number of CDs, perhaps 2-4 per month. However there was an internval of 12 years at least were I was really out of hifi and did little listening; in that period I averaged 2-4 per year! :(

Today my personal collection is only about 400 CDs. Other family members own an additional 200 or so, but I basically never listen to them, and they don't usually get played on the main system. Also, I own about 150 LPs and the family another 50, but these almost never get listened to. My wife is a bit of a VHS/DVD collector and has 400-500.

Consider that listening for 2 hours a day, 7 days a week equates to about 725 hours a year. If the aveage CD is 50 minutes in length, the greatest number of CDs you can listen to in a year is only about 875 listening to each only once. So you have to figure it'll take a long time to cycle through a collection of 2000+.

[bobsticks]

.
Consider that listening for 2 hours a day, 7 days a week equates to about 725 hours a year. If the aveage CD is 50 minutes in length, the greatest number of CDs you can listen to in a year is only about 875 listening to each only once. So you have to figure it'll take a long time to cycle through a collection of 2000+.

True, so true.
I am fortunate to be able to enjoy some non-critical listening at work. Even with that taken into consideration I have pushed a tt purchase a bit further back on the old "to do" list. There's a great vinyl store in my immediate area and I can only imagine the absolute disruptive chaos that would wreak in my life.

Cheers

[noddin0ff]

I'm tired of hearing all these pretenders with tiny collections of less than 400CDs. Any true audiophile knows that you really can't even begin to appreciate, much less, experience the subtleties of music until you invested in at least 1800CDs… anything short of that and you’re just wasting your time.

[Bernd]

Today I regularly buy a modest number of CDs, perhaps 2-4 per month. However there was an internval of 12 years at least were I was really out of hifi and did little listening; in that period I averaged 2-4 per year! :(

Today my personal collection is only about 400 CDs. Other family members own an additional 200 or so, but I basically never listen to them, and they don't usually get played on the main system. Also, I own about 150 LPs and the family another 50, but these almost never get listened to. My wife is a bit of a VHS/DVD collector and has 400-500.

Consider that listening for 2 hours a day, 7 days a week equates to about 725 hours a year. If the aveage CD is 50 minutes in length, the greatest number of CDs you can listen to in a year is only about 875 listening to each only once. So you have to figure it'll take a long time to cycle through a collection of 2000+.

Hi Bill, how are you doing?
I think I will have to disagree with you on the collection size. It's one of the few things when I believe that bigger is better.:)
I don't think it's about how long it will take to listen to them all, but accessibility. I have a fairly large collection and some discs are very rarely played, but if I want to, they are available to me. I am not a collector for collecting sake. If I like something I'll buy it.
I was also semi absent from audio for about 8 years, so I make up for lost time now.
Anyway, hope life is treating you well.

Peace

Bernd:16:

[Feanor]

Hi Bill, how are you doing?
I think I will have to disagree with you on the collection size. It's one of the few things when I believe that bigger is better.:)
I don't think it's about how long it will take to listen to them all, but accessibility. I have a fairly large collection and some discs are very rarely played, but if I want to, they are available to me. I am not a collector for collecting sake. If I like something I'll buy it.
I was also semi absent from audio for about 8 years, so I make up for lost time now.
...
Bernd

I totally agree that accessibility is a big factor. And for my part I'm systematically collecting classic repertoire for that, with some emphasis on contemporary composers & pieces. I want to hear those piece and if I wait for them to come to FM or get them from a buddy, I might never hear them. I've almost doubled my collection in the last 2 years and have no intention of letting up any time soon.

Personally I'm doing well. I don't think I ever mentioned in on this forum, but I had triple cardiac by-pass surgery back in January. I've recovered very well I'm glad to say.:22:

[JoeE SP9]

Today I regularly buy a modest number of CDs, perhaps 2-4 per month. However there was an internval of 12 years at least were I was really out of hifi and did little listening; in that period I averaged 2-4 per year! :(

Today my personal collection is only about 400 CDs. Other family members own an additional 200 or so, but I basically never listen to them, and they don't usually get played on the main system. Also, I own about 150 LPs and the family another 50, but these almost never get listened to. My wife is a bit of a VHS/DVD collector and has 400-500.

Consider that listening for 2 hours a day, 7 days a week equates to about 725 hours a year. If the aveage CD is 50 minutes in length, the greatest number of CDs you can listen to in a year is only about 875 listening to each only once. So you have to figure it'll take a long time to cycle through a collection of 2000+.

The majority of my collection is Jazz and popular music. A large portion of that is LP's or CD's that have only 1 or 2 selections that I want to hear. so it isn't about how long it would take to cycle through a collection. It's about what I want to hear. The size of my collection gives me the choice of playing what I want no matter how off the wall it may be. When I have guests and I am doing my "DJ" thing I sometimes introduce the next selection by saying 'Monty Python".:ihih:

[Woochifer]

~800 CDs
~400 LPs and 12" singles
~450 DVDs (most of which are cataloged on the site linked in my signature)
~300 cassettes (mostly includes album dubs, mix tapes, demos, concert bootlegs, radio drama, dance mixes, and other off-the-air recordings; very few prerecorded tapes)
~100 VHS tapes (almost all over-the-air recordings or Laserdisc dubs, only a few prerecorded movies)
12 96/24 PCM "DAD"s
15 DVD-As
~40 SACDs and hybrid discs
6 eight-tracks (but nothing to play them on!)

My CD purchasing has slowed down in recent years because I've been populating my DVD collection. More recently, I've been turning my attention towards SACDs.

[JohnMichael]

Personally I'm doing well. I don't think I ever mentioned in on this forum, but I had triple cardiac by-pass surgery back in January. I've recovered very well I'm glad to say.:22:[/QUOTE]


Good to hear you are doing well. From a recovery standpoint that is a tough suregery.

[Feanor]

Good to hear you are doing well. From a recovery standpoint that is a tough suregery.

I credit my surgeon and cardiologists. Cardiac care is reputedly the best in Canada right here in London, ON, and I have no reason to doubt it. Also, I had the advantage of going into relatively fit and otherwise in good health.

[Feanor]

I average around a dozen cd purchases a week, although it's usually feast or famine. For instance, this week I'll be lucky to grab anything because of a time consuming project at work. Two weeks ago I snagged 29 in a single day. Basically, I rarely come home empty handed. I lost count several months ago but at the time I was just over 1200 discs.
DVDs are a different story. I might buy two or three a month. While I have over 400 it is just not the priority.

Apart from finding it pricey, I just wouldn't have time to listen to that many. :p

[musicoverall]

Hi Bill, how are you doing?
I think I will have to disagree with you on the collection size. It's one of the few things when I believe that bigger is better.:)
I don't think it's about how long it will take to listen to them all, but accessibility. I have a fairly large collection and some discs are very rarely played, but if I want to, they are available to me. I am not a collector for collecting sake. If I like something I'll buy it.
I was also semi absent from audio for about 8 years, so I make up for lost time now.
Anyway, hope life is treating you well.

Peace

Bernd:16:

I have somewhere around 7500 CD's, including CD-R's, and about 8000 LP's. Obviously many of them don't get a lot of playing time. However, I often drive home and think about a particular disc or more likely a particular artist and it's there waiting for me, whether I've listened to it recently, or not for two years. I've been collecting since 1971 and if it's good enough for me to listen to and enjoy, I keep it. My listening tastes span the globe and I tend to go overboard on every genre that interests me. Right now I'm listening to a lot of old jazz on vinyl and a lot of "apocalyptic folk" or "industrial" as they are called... bands like Current 93, Sol Invictus, Nurse with Wound, Zoviet France, etc. Right now my best friend is strangefortune.com.

My buying habits are excessive and obsessive - generally about 30 new pieces per month. As I am not rich, tradeoffs are necessary. I own a POS house (it's where my hat goes), a POS car (it's dry transportation) and POS furniture (my ass doesn't care how much something costs). My retirement will be set when it is time and my kids will go to college when it is time. The disposable income goes into my neverending quest for The Absolute Sound (and I don't mean the magazine!).

[paul_pci]

My CD collection is nine inches long.

[Mike Anderson]

I don't think it's about how long it will take to listen to them all, but accessibility. I have a fairly large collection and some discs are very rarely played, but if I want to, they are available to me.

Ah - therein lies the power of a Squeezebox.

I have over 1,000 CDs. I frequently put it on a random mode of some sort, so they all get listened to sooner or later.

Or, if I want to hear one, it takes seconds to put it on, without getting out of my chair.

[emorphien]

I have about 150 CDs, and 30-40 LPs. I have about 20 SACDs and DVD-As (don't know how many of each). I've got about 50 DVDs, although probably 60%+ are parts of boxed sets.

I really don't buy many CDs because honestly there aren't that many I actually want to own and I have trouble determining which older albums I want to buy. And then I have to wrestle with the CD or LP decision which sometimes ends up with both (or sometimes LP and SACD, etc).

[SlumpBuster]

My CD collection is nine inches long.

Dang it! That's what I was going to say... except mine's 12 inches/ :ihih:

But seriously folks, I don't consider quanity as big of a factor as quality. Any goober can go to a swap meet and empty out the 10 for a $1.00 boxes of LPs and claim "Look, Ma! I got me a 5000 lp collection." However, your not going to end up with a very respectable collection. I could tell you that I have X amount of CD's but should I include my copy of "12 inches of Snow."

I live in a pretty bohemian part of town so there are alot of used record stores in my neighborhood, maybe 6 within a mile of my house. Only two traffic in any sort of jazz, and none of them elevate classical out of the 25cent bins. One of the proprietors is a long long time in the local scene and is well known for appraising estate collections after someone dies. He says he doesn't do classical anymore because there is just no money in it. Ebay has killed it for local collectors. This sets up a paradox where I'm standing in a record store next to a classical LP that a collector like Feanor might pay $10-20 for, but it is labled 25cents. Meanwhile, I'm paying $15 for some minty fresh Velvet Underground that Feanor wouldn't pay 25cents for. Crazy world.

Accordingly, if you have a collection that is well thought out and contains almost only records that you would love to hear at any given moment, then your on the right track, whether its 50 or 5000 units. The difference is listenability. My wife has been on an AC/DC kick lately playing all my LP's from junior high. 20 years later and "If You Want Blood" plays a good as it did the first time around. My wife's New Kids cassettes however, have been a long time in the trash.

So even with a collection in the thousands for each LPs and CDs, I don't boast about the size, I boast that it is a collection I want to listen to, even if I couldn't possibly listen to 3000 lps because of time constraints.

[Feanor]

.... This sets up a paradox where I'm standing in a record store next to a classical LP that a collector like Feanor might pay $10-20 for, but it is labled 25cents. Meanwhile, I'm paying $15 for some minty fresh Velvet Underground that Feanor wouldn't pay 25cents for. Crazy world.
...


Vinyl is useless to me. Has been since the time I smashed a $500 stylus the first time I used it. Makes $15 look like a bargain.

Crazy world indeed. I won't pay a nickel for Velvet Underground, never mind a quarter, (but that's just me). :ciappa:

[Duds]

I'm guessing i am over 3000 cds by now. all of my racks and shelves are full, stacks are taking over the floor in the bedroom i use to store them all.

[SlumpBuster]

Vinyl is useless to me. Has been since the time I smashed a $500 stylus the first time I used it. Makes $15 look like a bargain.

Crazy world indeed. I won't pay a nickel for Velvet Underground, never mind a quarter, (but that's just me). :ciappa:

Yeah, I've always had a turntable, but never with a nice cart. I finally got my first midlevel Goldring cart and promptly left the turntable on all night having forgotten about it. Round and round she went for 10 hours straight. I felt like a real boob, but just convinced myself that I was "burning it in." You don't get that problem with a CD player.

[Jimmy C]

Curious to know other member's collecting / buying habits. My collection is quite small but growing, i've built a pretty decent starter system over these past years so now I could focus on actually listening to music!. I have about 110 cd's and 50 lp's I started to purchase music cds 4 years ago and i'm still at a small amount. I'm really impressed how some people could reach the 1000 mark, so how often do you buy cd's , and how big has your collection got over the years?

...maybe about 300, burned included. I always resented buying the silver disc - $18 (or so) was just too much. Burning CDs is the way to go, but my player in the livingroom doesn't do 'em.

That, coupled with the fact that an LPs possess a certain magic... well, I'll take the P.I.T.A. vinyl.

I recently gave away about 300 (or so) LPs that I didn't care for. I'm down to a core 500 that I really like, mostly Jazz.

I have to find a reasonably priced CD/DVD that does burned... a friend has a VERY extensive Rock/Pop/Jazz that I could copy any time. Buying a better/different player will actually be cheaper in the long run.

LPs are soo MUCH more fun, though...

[ninetynine]

Yeah, I've always had a turntable, but never with a nice cart. I finally got my first midlevel Goldring cart and promptly left the turntable on all night having forgotten about it. Round and round she went for 10 hours straight. I felt like a real boob, but just convinced myself that I was "burning it in." You don't get that problem with a CD player.


I've also given up on vinyl, it takes too much time and care I find.

[chaos24]

I honestly have 1,246 cds and some are duplicates of some that were to scratched to enjoy....i have about 300 dvds ...i have bought alot of cds from BMG and have saved alot over the years...i still buy about 3 cds a month...i don't have any vinyl, but can still remeber my first vinyl album...AC/DC ..High Voltage....i now own the cd and sounds much better

[spacedeckman]

About 1/2 as many as I have LPs.

[The Tahitijack]

Last year I sold most of my LPs, keeping about 50 primarily for the covers and high value of the LP.

I have about 1,200 cds. 800 are in two Sony cd changers that are linked and so all 800 can run all on random/no delay for parties. Not an ipod but it works for me. I have 200 in a changer in my fitness room and play them during workouts. Another 200 are in a cd changer in my guitar studio, where I learn songs and play along. I keep about 20 in my 4Runner.

As others have said I like to hit Tower Records every Tuesday, when the new cds hit the market added one or two to my collection every week. Vast collections are often overwhelming to the point where you seldom listen to some cds for months at a time. But when you get the urge to listen to that Miles Davis cd you bought back in 1992, which has been gathering dust for a year or two, you have it and can instantly enjoy it again as if its brand new.

[PHiX]

about 150 - 170, started buying about 6 years ago... thats when I got my first cd-player, yes, late adopter... was more interested in video games before that.

[JDavenportBriggsIV]

Mine is 11.5 inches.


JD Briggs.
Maine

[thekid]

Never really thought about it but a quick count puts me around 400 CD's still have about 30LP's left and I'm down to about 200 albums on cassette which are slowly developing problems. I guess by some measures here I am not a true "audiophile" but then I own Bose speakers so my membership in that club has already been stripped.... :)

[StanleyMuso]

I started when I was about 15 years old. First there was vinyl, then cassettes to tape the vinyle to prevent the vinyle wearing out, then CDs and music VCRs, and finally DVDs. There's shelves and cupboards full of the stuff - I really should transfer the old analogue stuff onto CDRs and DVDRs. I never throw anything away. As other posters mentioned, its not how often we play some stuff, but the fact that it is there when the mood strikes us. Sometimes I haven't thought of a piece for years, than suddenly, in the middle of the night, it gets into my head and I just have to dig it out and listen to it. And boy am I upset if I can't find it!