A few weeks ago I wrote about falling in love with my turntable again. It lan­guished in the base­ment after a long ban­ish­ment to the guest bed­room, where it sat unused for months. It was pret­ty crazy for a guy whose job is all about music.

I res­ur­rect­ed it and all was right in the world, or so I thought. But it was­n’t. I want­ed to be sat­is­fied with the warm sounds ema­nat­ing from my Tech­nics 1200, but what becomes of the hun­dreds of CDs I’ve col­lect­ed over the years?

I broke down and dust­ed off my CD play­er, too, and you know what? It sounds great! I’d for­got­ten just how clear and loud CDs are! MP3s may be con­ve­nient, cheap, and plen­ti­ful, but they sound so slop­py on any­thing oth­er than tin­ny earbuds.

You know what I did right after that? Some­thing I don’t think I’ve done since ’99 — I bought a used CD on eBay! 

Crazy, right? Look at it this way: it was cheap­er than iTunes!