Love or hate your compact discs

Ten reasons to gripe about the CD:

Colder sound (most of the time): Too few CDs… Ten reasons to gripe about the CD:

Colder sound (most of the time): Too few CDs capture the warmth and depth of the sound field the way those vinyl album grooves did.

Heftier prices:Compact discs remain double the price of albums, which has made it prohibitive for fans to take a chance on releases by new or unproven artists.

Lost art:Smaller graphics, tinier typefaces, no more gatefold album sleeves – boohoo!

Lost concept: With remote controls and multi-CD shufflers allowing listeners to reconfigure and, in some cases, disfigure the listening experience, artists are losing incentive to create and sequence songs for an album designed to be heard as a whole.

No flipping:Albums divided the listening experience into 20-minute halves, and album sides became like chapters in a book. Artists haven’t found a similarly coherent strategy for sequencing CDs, which tend to be top-loaded with their best songs and then dribble to a finish.

No more 45s: Once 45-rpm singles provided a musical entry point for the young or the impoverished, but now the music industry often provides commercial radio with mixes of songs that never become available on CD.

Excess isn’t best: Because CDs can hold twice as much music as albums, artists too often lard on bonus tracks that don’t measure up to their best work.

“Hidden” tracks: When a few bands started hiding songs at the end of CDs, after many minutes of silence, it was a momentarily cool gimmick. Now it’s just an annoying and overused one.

Let’s reissue everything: CD profit potential prompted labels to scour their vaults and re-release long-shelved albums that should have stayed shelved (everything Elvis ever recorded).

Free to pollute: Now everyone can record their own CD in the privacy of their own bedroom and upload it onto the Internet in a matter of hours, leading to an unprecedented glut of mostly mediocre or worse music, and making it tougher than ever to find the good stuff.

Ten reasons to praise the CD:

Better sound (some of the time): After two decades, the digital mastering and mixing process has been refined enough that once in a while (see the latest Rolling Stones reissues) it’s a revelation, uncovering previously unheard details in the music.

Convenience: Pop ’em in, slide ’em out, play ’em anywhere in any order.

No fuss, no muss: When was the last time you dusted off a CD before playing it? Or got off the couch to flip the side over?

Easier to store: CDs take up one-quarter of the space occupied by albums.

Easier to reproduce and share: Makes compiling the year-end mix CD a breeze.

Charley Patton box set: Who knows if the blues master’s work, and that of countless other legendary early 20th century artists, would have resurfaced without the CD incentive?

Bob Dylan’s bootlegs: Dylan’s rejects (“Blind Willie McTell”) are more brilliant than most artists’ legit offerings. Without CD profit as an incentive, would Dylan’s label have bothered to snoop around for his shelved gems in its dusty archive?

A peek behind the curtain: The CD age brought us outtakes and demos from Brian Wilson, the Beatles, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and countless other major artists, providing unprecedented step-by-step insight into how they created their masterpieces.

Sometimes more is better: The Flaming Lips’ “Zaireeka” – a box set of four CDs designed to be played simultaneously on four stereo systems – would have been unimaginable in the album era. Too bad more artists didn’t try such daring moves.

Free to create: Everyone can record their own CD in the privacy of their own bedroom and upload it onto the Internet in a matter of hours, freeing artists from the tyranny of expensive recording studios and major label recording contracts.