Cd's to make a come back in the future?

My CD/SACD collection continues to grow, have never looked back

I think Darko's point was that with DAC technology advancing-- that a CD transport and an external DAC-- makes the sound quality, in many cases, sound better than the HiRes download.  So why pony up for a HiRes download of a CD that you already own, when in fact the CD might sound as good as the supposed HiRes download.  And ripping a CD and then using a great DAC can make the sound quality better than the CD.  So again, I think his point is, keep the CD collection.

And not to beat a dead horse but for the frugal audiophile (an oxymoron if there ever was one) if you do the leg work you can get an extremely well engineered CD, e.g. Two Against Nature by Steely Dan (my reference CD) for $5. Hi res files are $15 and up and require a back-up strategy.

I think there is another element here. To the aspiring audiophile DACs, cables, transports, streamers,jitter  etc etc, especially the high dollar stuff, can be off-putting both in their complexity and cost but also in the wide range of opinions in regard to how to go about streaming, server set up and all that.

If I were to advise someone interested in dabbling in high end audio I would recommend starting with a good CD player and CDs. Simple. Relatively cheap. This will allow them to hear high end and get their feer wet and without someone telling them that SQ is awful through anything but a $10,000 DAC with $500 USB cables. From there they can get into servers, streaming, jitter management devices etc. as their interest level and SQ tastes dictate.

In other words, CDs are the cheapest, easiest way to get into hi-fi.