Poll: Which of the following music media, if someone suddenly handed you a piece of music recorded on it, would you be able to play without making additional purchases?
-
@mcc Vinyl only. I don't see a point in CDs – when it comes to ease, playing from drive/stream beats everything, so there needs to be a reason to have additional media. And vinyl has the biggest covers, lovely leaflets and looks pretty while spinning.
@ljrk @mcc
Vinyl wear is very fast. 20 plays loses most above 10 KHz.
Distortion is high
Noise much higher than CD.
33 vinyl recorded with less dynamic range than 45 to extend playtime. Both less than CD.CD best way to buy a copy of music to play anywhere. You never own streaming and needs Internet.
CD trivial to store on PC/Flash etc with automatic track names.Cassette is best for audio books as location is "saved" between players. Quality OK for that but marginal for music.
-
@mcc
I'm not kidding about having an 8-track player! It was included as a component in a combined AM/FM radio and 8-track player. The radio is still in regular use, because it is an excellent stereo set with an antenna and two good speakers. No modern radio can beat it. Sadly, we haven't seen an 8-track tape in years. But if one should ever fall into our hands, we would be able to play it!
@CommonSparrow @mcc
I saw a home 8 Track player once, ever.
Never saw one in a car, though I had a S/H car 8T in the house for a while 1999 & 1 cart. -
(BONUS POLL)
Which of the following music media, if someone suddenly handed you a piece of music recorded on it, would you be able to play without making additional purchases?
NOTES:
- If the answer is "none of the above" ,click "Show results". We can probably compare the previous poll to judge the significance of the scale of responses.
- Rather than worrying about differences between reel-to-reel formats, answer "reel to reel tape" if you can play at least one reel to reel tape format.
@mcc I suppose *technically*, I could feed the player piano roll through my scanner and write some code to do image recognition on that and then process the holes into something that would generate MIDI. That's not buying anything new, but it's probably cheating for the purposes of this poll.
-
Poll: Which of the following music media, if someone suddenly handed you a piece of music recorded on it, would you be able to play without making additional purchases?
@mcc
None of the above, unfortunately. -
Poll: Which of the following music media, if someone suddenly handed you a piece of music recorded on it, would you be able to play without making additional purchases?
@mcc I still have one or two optical drives in the house if I look hard enough.
Definitely one on the TV/media center Debian box, and I'm pretty sure there's one more kicking around downstairs somewhere but I never use it.
-
Poll: Which of the following music media, if someone suddenly handed you a piece of music recorded on it, would you be able to play without making additional purchases?
@mcc None of the above
-
Poll: Which of the following music media, if someone suddenly handed you a piece of music recorded on it, would you be able to play without making additional purchases?
In 2013, I bought a Blu Ray read write drive for my desktop. That drive has made it through all of my upgrades and is now effectively a built-in appliance in my home.
This year we were looking at ways to give our 2 year old access to music and realized that the best way to avoid any stupid vendor lock in bullshit was a CD player.
Between those and my 10 year old laptop I have 3 ways to play CDs but none of the others.
-
Poll: Which of the following music media, if someone suddenly handed you a piece of music recorded on it, would you be able to play without making additional purchases?
@mcc CD but in the blueray player that’s gathering dust or the external DVD-RW drive on the laptop.
-
Poll: Which of the following music media, if someone suddenly handed you a piece of music recorded on it, would you be able to play without making additional purchases?
@mcc 8 track will work if I steal a replacement drive band off one of my cassette decks... it broke when I was fixing it up last time.
I really need a DAT player; I have studio recordings of my old band on this format and no player
️Never got into MD
️Reel2reel tape I did have around 1983 but both valve decks went to the junk years ago. So sad, I'd love one of those now

-
Poll: Which of the following music media, if someone suddenly handed you a piece of music recorded on it, would you be able to play without making additional purchases?
@mcc Have a CD player in my car still, a Blu-Ray player that should be able to play audio CDs through my entertainment system, and a USB Blu-Ray drive to play on a computer with VLC.
-
Poll: Which of the following music media, if someone suddenly handed you a piece of music recorded on it, would you be able to play without making additional purchases?
@mcc i would need to go into the basement to find a cd player in storage. But I have one somewhere.
-
Poll: Which of the following music media, if someone suddenly handed you a piece of music recorded on it, would you be able to play without making additional purchases?
-
Poll: Which of the following music media, if someone suddenly handed you a piece of music recorded on it, would you be able to play without making additional purchases?
@mcc I do have a cassette player but it needs a new belt
-
@mcc @christinelove I figure it’s got to be that, right? The CD revival is underway but no way is that responsible for this hitting 94%.
@misty @mcc @christinelove Yeah, I forgor that this was a multiple choice poll so I didn't click "cassette tape" but I have an old boombox that I'm pretty sure I picked up for free, specifically to play the CDs I still have. Also pretty sure the DVD drives on my PC count though I haven't tried using them to play CDs so idk…we also have a USB DVD player that I think still works. Can a PS4 play CDs?
I also don't know what is Redbook but from context I assume it's what I'd call "a regular CD"

-
@mcc @christinelove I figure it’s got to be that, right? The CD revival is underway but no way is that responsible for this hitting 94%.
@misty @mcc @christinelove Not sure if it's helping, or if folks would realize it's an option, but anyone with a modern disc-capable game console (PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series) would have at least that option for a music CD.
On the nerdier side, it gets even easier. While I only have one turntable, I have lots of things that can play a music CD: 2 vehicles, 5+ old computers (one disc-capable laptop), 3 shelf DVD players (one HD DVD), 2 portable CD players, and 10 game consoles back to the Sega CD.
-
(BONUS POLL)
Which of the following music media, if someone suddenly handed you a piece of music recorded on it, would you be able to play without making additional purchases?
NOTES:
- If the answer is "none of the above" ,click "Show results". We can probably compare the previous poll to judge the significance of the scale of responses.
- Rather than worrying about differences between reel-to-reel formats, answer "reel to reel tape" if you can play at least one reel to reel tape format.
@mcc My uncle, until just recently had 16 player pianos. The great purge of 2026 has brought that down to one. I assume the one kept still functions. As a result I voted for the player piano roll.
-
Poll: Which of the following music media, if someone suddenly handed you a piece of music recorded on it, would you be able to play without making additional purchases?
@mcc Would be interesting to see a version of this thar stipulated *without using a PC/computer*.
-
@mcc CD
I discovered two months ago that I have a CD player! I thought my Blu-ray player couldn’t read them 🤯
-

