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

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.

nobody knows how much the fanless units are? because the fans on pc's, you know, you can hear them, you can hear them working. they are noisy. is fan noise for pc based units the pops and clicks of dirty vinyl? Of course you can always clean the vinyl, what can you do about the fan noise?

ok, i found out a base unit for a fanless units start at $2,299 from endpcnoise.com

good luck from there.

In a group that generally believes in tiny differnces in the sound of a single resistor or wire, I am puzzled by claims that data from a hard drive equals data read from a great cd transport. Data has to get onto that HD in the first place. Measurements prove that there are significant differences in the error rate of data read by various disc transports. Don't we all recognize that data with a high degree of error correction applied does not sound quite as good as data read with fewer errors in the first place? Isn't that why expensive transports exist? Is there some doubt that data read off a cheap plastic cd drive in the electromagnetic storm inside a computer is unlikely to as error-free as data read off a great transport? (disclosure: I use a Genesis Time Lens for an even better data stream.) So unless you wish to rely on that cheap plastic cd drive in your computer (sadly, plextor is no more), don't you need an excellent transport to get cd data to your hard drive at the highest qualify level? [I don't think we're debating whether high-bit-rate-downloads can sound better.] Why are some of you claiming that data that arrives at a dac via cd transport to hard-drive to dac is equal to data that goes straight from a cd-transport to a dac, when audiophiles are almost universally aware that every time you introduce another electronic device in the chain, there is a decrease in quality?