The CD player is dead.......

I do not really have a dog in this fight as I do listen to mostly vinyl. A couple of my buddys and me have trying many DACs and computer server systems. I have to admit I am very impressed with the sound provided when it is set up correctly. One such set up that shocked me is the new DB Labs Tranquility DAC with the latest super flat Mac Mini with a solidstate hard drive for the operating system and external firewire standard 5400rpm harddrive to store the music. With good cabling and the Mac optimized for music playback only using a program called "Play" for the music management program using AIF apple lossless it is scary good. This set up has ate up all the high end CD players in our group. Here is a list of CD players that have lost. (1) KRELL EVO 505 (2) a plethora of high end Denon DVD/SACD/CD Players (3)Pleathora of Sony higher end DVD/SACD/CD Players and too many other CD players to mention. I believe the CD player is here for a while because of the amount of software laying around. I will put my whole CD collection on hard drive and of course have a back up drive just in case. Music server are the future and with much less jitter than a optical drive has the music server when properly set up it is far superior to most if not all CD players. I will be purchasing the new Audio Research DAC 8 and a Mac Mini in the next few months.

If the CD player is so dead, then howcome artists
are still releasing their new music on them all the time?

The distribution model for CDs has changed drastically and downloading of individual tracks is gaining momentum, but I think there wil always be a demand for music that is packaged and you can see and touch. After all, the internet and downloading has not made books extinct. CDs are still the prime medium for packaged music. Not sure yet what will come next to replace it eventually.

I am not sure anything really dies....

I still listen to AM/FM Radio, LP albums, CD's, and an iPod.

I have recently read articles in Stereophile about 78 RPM records and the dreaded cassette tape people are still using.

All of my CD's are on a computer/Drobo/DAC system that cost more than my stereo system.

In addition, I like to listen to/watch both Internet radio and Blu Ray/DVD music discs. Oh, and my SACD player is still connected and used occasionally.

Its a fun ride.... just enjoy it and quit worrying about where it's going.

Devilboy, a more relevant subject line to me would be: "The 16/44.1 format is dead..." Maybe the answer is yes, but not in the direction I want. There are at least hundreds of millions of downloads each day at resolutions much lower than red book standards for use on iPods, iPhones, laptops and the like. For these people, clearly convenience trumps quality. This fact is polluting the recording and production arts, making recent popular recorded product so compromised and compressed that they sound like crap on high end systems. Very unfortunate.

As for the CD player, I have a bunch of music on my laptop, both downloads and music ripped from CD and stored in iTunes. I listen to this music at work on a modest system and DAC, and on the road through headphones - convenience eclipses quality in this case. I am waiting to replace my CD based home systems with HD based music server systems until higher resolution digital formats and hardware become much more common and affordable. I just don't see or hear the advantage at this point to recapitalize.

I have a close friend who is retired and has invested a lot of time to download his entire CD and LP collections to HD, and now has them all at his finger tips. Neat. To me it still doesn't sound any better or not even as good as his digital player or a good turntable. And now, he has invested much time and effort to lock his analog material into a digital resolution limited by the analog system and ADC used at the time to re-record it, an affront to the quest for the Absoulte Sound in my mind and major sacrifice to convenience.

The CD player may be receeding as the principal music format, but I think rumors of it's imenent and complete death, among audiophiles at least, are highly exagerated. And if it does die very quickly, it will likely be replaced in the mass market by source material and equipment in most cases that is of lower quality, not higher quality, than what we had before. When I can access popular and affordable download pipelines and the ubiquitous iPods/iPhones can routinely handle and play 24/96 or better resolution digital music, then the CD format can rest in peace in mind and closet.