is cd finished as a main music carrier or player

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Cd is going to be around there isnt enough 24 bit or flac music around and for streaming how do you get steaming down to your system when its 100 feet away from your router. Wireless wouldnt trust it and download quality is like one said years away. So no CD isnt finished as a main music carrier just people who think it is. I mean if you could get WAV files to your pre amp or integrated great but how? No wires to far away, would it be cost effective between a dac and server anyhow?
 
Mike_Schmidt:Cd is going to be around there isnt enough 24 bit or flac music around

Not now no, but nobody's talking about CD disappearing tomorrow! Lossless and 24-bit downloads are going to increase in number, especially as it's cheap to offer them (infrastructure wise).

and for streaming how do you get steaming down to your system when its 100 feet away from your router.

100 feet? One. Hundred. Feet? Where the hell do YOU live? Are you secretly Bill Gates in disguise? I live in quite a big house but from one end to the other it's only about 40 feet (it's about 12 metres, give or take), tops! 100 feet puts me in the middle of one of next door's fields! Besides that's irrelevant as my router, NAS and music system are all in the same room. Most people can get reasonable coverage all over their house with a standard router, but it isn't needed all over the house typically.

Wireless wouldnt trust it

Unfortunately that says more about you than it does the technology. Anyway, wireless isn't the only option.

and download quality is like one said years away.

no, it's here and now and on the increase, as I said before, we're not talking about CDs disappearing tomorrow, but sales ARE dropping, already.

So no CD isnt finished as a main music carrier just people who think it is. I mean if you could get WAV files to your pre amp or integrated great but how? No wires to far away,

no it isn't! UTP has an effective maximum length of 100metres and that can be extended with the right equipment, but nobody, outside of a mansion, is going to require that kind of length anyway.

would it be cost effective between a dac and server anyhow?

UTP cabling is dirt cheap, provided you don't buy it from a high-street retailer (PC World I'm talking to YOU!).

I'm sorry Mike, but your objections are laughable, at best. You seriously need to look into the subject a bit more before raising objections that have already been solved.
 
Big Chris:

The only issue I have with CDs are the ever more intricate and annoying packaging. I believe the humble jewel case is the best method for storing CDs. It's easy to use and keeps the CDs in good condition.

Digipacks are a P.I.T.A.. Reams of cardboard which never folds back the way it originally was. CDs which have to slide in and out of a cardboard box which inevitably leads to scratched CDs.

Most recent CD I've bought is 'The Dillinger Escape Plan - Option Paralysis'. This digipack takes some beating for its complete annoyingness. Sure, it looks great, but when all you want to do is get a CD out and stick it in the player, but don't have 15 minutes to spare to do it. It's a headache.

When selecting CDs for the car, I will actually decide against a CD due to its awkward packaging, even if I really want to listen to the music.

I'm with you BC on the packaging. I must admit the digipack for 10,000 Days by Tool was cool for the first 20 mins or so. I can't say I bother to look at the 3D images nowadays.

I'd like to get into all this NAS/Squeezebox/Sonos stuff but finding the time to actually listen to music as opposed to hearing it in the background is a luxury.

How easy is it to scroll through music on these devices? I've nearly 4000 cds and my i-Pod dock takes an age to scroll through what I have on it. It's a good job How Ace Are Bulidings by A is one of my fave albums
emotion-1.gif
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NSYGrinner:I'd like to get into all this NAS/Squeezebox/Sonos stuff but finding the time to actually listen to music as opposed to hearing it in the background is a luxury.
How easy is it to scroll through music on these devices? I've nearly 4000 cds and my i-Pod dock takes an age to scroll through what I have on it. It's a good job How Ace Are Bulidings by A is one of my fave albums
emotion-1.gif
.

I can only speak for Sonos, but that has the "Power Scroll" function (well at least the old thumb wheel controller does, I assume the touch screen one has something similar), whereby instead of scrolling through the entire list you just scroll through an alphabet list until you find the starting letter you want (say "S") and that takes you to every artist beginning with S and you scroll from there.

Obviously you can search by artist, album name, track name, pretty much anything you want really.
 
the_lhc:

Use the "quote" link johnny, makes life a lot easier...

johnnyblue:the_lhc:That's fairly meaningless to be honest, I shouldn't think many vinyl enthusiasts bother with singles anymore though, I certainly don't, there's far more titles being released on LP than there are 7" singles now.

I just quoted singles because I couldn't be bothered to look up album sales, I still can't be bothered but I trhink albums peaked in 1978. But obviously the same principle applies.Once upon a time several miilions of vinyl albums were sold every year, now considerably less than a million are.

Where did you pull that figure from? Predicted sales for 2009 were 2.8million units and that, I think was only for the USA. Granted it's tiny compared to CD but it's not "considerably less than a million"

I think you need to re-read the title of this thread - it asks if cd is finished as a main music carrier.

My figure for sales of vinyl was based on memory and refers to the UK. Why are you quoting US sales? But based on your quote US vinyl sales still only represent less than 1% of total sales - hardly a main carrier. If, in the fullness of time, cd sales fall to that kind of percentage then the answer to the OPs question is no.

"With respect that's a pretty meaningless comment. What does "computer based music" sound like? Are you suggesting it all sounds the same? I expect someone who's paid 10k for a Sooloos system and equivalently priced amps to play it through might have something to say about that. And I'd put my Sonos system up against any "ghettoblaster" or "mini system" and expect to win comfortably. "

Okay, to clarify,most music played through the average computer and desktop speakers probably sounds about as good or bad as music played through an average sub £100 cd/radio.

Yes but only if you actually listen to it through desktop speakers, I'm not going to comment on the general public but I'd guarantee that the majority of people HERE who listen to "computer-based audio" aren't using desktop speakers to do it, they're either outputting from the PC to a DAC and then their main system or, like me, they bypass the PC altogether. Either way the point remains that saying "computer based audio" has a particular sound is as nonsensical as saying all CD systems sound the same.

Again the question asked isn't about the majority of the people HERE, because we're hardly typical. The majority of people are quite happy with mini systems and ghettoblasters and mp3s.In my opinion the majority will continue to be quite happy with a fairly low quality of sound whatever the source and will go for convenience over quality every time. To quote (or more likely misquote) Clement Attlee "The tragedy of the human race is that it can get used to anything."

They might well, but I'd be willing to bet a significant proportion of them only use it for listening to the radio, like they do now.

I've no idea what your point is there.

Exactly what I said, people might end up having to buy DAB radios with internal storage and online streaming capability but I'd be willing to bet that most people won't use the additional functions and just treat it as a radio (although I don't think they will all be buying those devices, a basic radio, even a DAB one, is always going to sell, people don't like paying for features they don't think they're going to use).

I don't agree people always pay for features they don't use. How many people now own hdtvs who don't have hdtv or blue ray? The majority, I would guess. People always think they might need something in the future, but as often as not any attempt to future proof anything is made redundant by the advances in technology. Besides, you usually don't get a choice. My amp has 6 functions of which I only use 2,cd and mp3, but you can't buy it with only those 2 functions.
 
I think you have to consider the cd for what it is, which in essence is a portable, write-once hard drive of approximately 700MB in size. That's what you buy when you buy a cd. Additional to that, you get a storage and carry-case, plus informative leaflet-based packaging.

It's chief advantage over other hard drives is, perversely, its' limited size, meaning that should it break down in some way, it's relatively cheap to replace the lost data on it, (unlike say a pc drive).

It additionally has two further merits, of potentially being attractively presentational in nature, and the further merit of possessing a physical aspect too.

Starting from the top, in terms of cheap portability, the USB stick has equal merit, possesses its' own storage and carry case, but has no leaflet-based packaging of the same type as a cd.

It is relatively cheap to replace should it be lost, on the assumption that you have kept a copy of the music data stored safely elsewhere, such that you would not have the additional cost of replacing the actual data on it (unlike a cd), but would still have the cost of replacing the drive itself.

There is little that is attractive about it - however, other portable hard disc based platforms (such as the ipod) do boast a rare aesthetic grasp, and it's physical interface is a rare example of elegant design and practical usability.

I could go on,but won't. The CD is an early-form example of a portable write-once hard drive, and in that sense it has been supplanted technologically already.

How much demand there is for an overt physical aspect to music purchases in the future will ultimately determine its' fate. Note that moves to incorporate some form of dynamic visual interfaces with music purchases has already manifested itself, and will do so further into the portable media carrier medium.

Additionally, and possibly crucially, the current rights purchase that you make when you buy a cd is that of a perpetual license to play the music on that platform - note that you don't own the music, you buy the right to access the music. As it stands, the license is arguably generous, and any move towards a fully digital platform will likely meet resistance unless the same multi-platform usable perpetual rights access is incorporated into the model - further note that at this time, that is nothing like the model the industry either has or is proposing to allow for.
 
idc:

Johnnyblue, an amp with two inputs, though WHF did not give it a very good review

Yeah, but it's not my amp. You can't buy my amp with only two inputs.
 
IHC what downloads are there? Naim Linn....who listens to that. I think you have stocks somewhere in wireless or CD hurt your feelings. Take that and put that in your pipe and smoke it.
 
the_lhc:

ChrisMM: Soundstage was palpably less wide and the music lacked the gold-plated quality I got from the CD. Wrong stick?

The idea that two different USB sticks sound different is as much an anathema to me as the idea that two hard drives sound different or two network cables (or god forbid, wireless networks) sound different. I will not believe that's possible, it defies everything I know about computer storage.

To me the most interesting thing while trying out this DAC (and hearing it at hifi shows) has been the extent to which the sound is influenced by the 'input'. Increasingly we're told that if you get the DAC/audio output right, it doesn't matter if the digits come from a laptop, stick, DVD player, dedicated CD transport or whatever. This is not my experience.

The only explanation I can think of is that either the rip is at fault or the DAC does something to the data when it pulls it off the USB stick. Nothing else makes a great deal of sense.

It would make a lot of sense of you came round here and listened to it - which you're perfectly welcome to do. Of course the ripping process must be part of the issue - a cheapo DVD drive in a bog-standard PC versus the Naim CD transport etc.

I've no idea about the sound of sticks - however Martin Colloms apparently has done some investigation on this and makes that conclusion!

I'm a music listener and I know what I hear - the explanations come later. It's called empiricism. I simply took time out to record my observations, not express an opinion. Hey ho.
 
chebby:

ChrisMM:As far as the Nightfly album is concerned, I bought the LP on its release in 1982 and the CD sometime in the 1990s, and must have played it on fifty different players (turntable and CD) since....

I am on my fourth CD player since 1982.

And just sold my sixth turntable (since 1979) at the end of last year.

What do you do to them?

I don't know - just upgraded! Only 3 CD players since 1999 though (all Naim), though there is a NAD and a Denon elsewhere in the house. Not to mention walkmen etc. Before that a number of CD players as specs improved in the 80s and 90s. They all went to happy homes.
 
I too have my CD collection ripped to an external NAS and streamed via Squeezebox / Benchmark but I would still like a decent CD transport.

What bugs me is there is only a choice of high cost CD players with digital out (so paying for electronics I would not use), chepo Cd or DVD that would probably not last too long or mega expensive stand alone transports. What I would like is a good quality transport at a resonable price.
 
ChrisMM:the_lhc:ChrisMM: Soundstage was palpably less wide and the music lacked the gold-plated quality I got from the CD. Wrong stick?
The idea that two different USB sticks sound different is as much an anathema to me as the idea that two hard drives sound different or two network cables (or god forbid, wireless networks) sound different. I will not believe that's possible, it defies everything I know about computer storage.

To me the most interesting thing while trying out this DAC (and hearing it at hifi shows) has been the extent to which the sound is influenced by the 'input'. Increasingly we're told that if you get the DAC/audio output right, it doesn't matter if the digits come from a laptop, stick, DVD player, dedicated CD transport or whatever. This is not my experience.

The only explanation I can think of is that either the rip is at fault or the DAC does something to the data when it pulls it off the USB stick. Nothing else makes a great deal of sense.

It would make a lot of sense of you came round here and listened to it - which you're perfectly welcome to do.

Apologies, you misunderstand, I'm not suggesting you're hearing something that isn't there, I'm quite happy to accept there's a difference, I'm simply saying I don't believe that different USB sticks can sound different. If that was the case then no data stored on a USB stick could be considered safe. Imagine writing the same word document to two different USB sticks and then getting slightly different versions of the document when you read it back from each stick, you couldn't work with something like that.

Of course the ripping process must be part of the issue - a cheapo DVD drive in a bog-standard PC versus the Naim CD transport etc.

Even that's not relevant, the PC can read the CD as many times as it likes in order to get the data off cleanly, if you did a bit-by-bit comparison between the CD and what the drive is reading from it it will be identical (again, if it wasn't you could never rely on data stored on a CD or DVD to be accurate or incorrupt). It's more the encoding part of the process I'm questioning, although if you're writing to WAV then there shouldn't be much going on from that point of view.

I've no idea about the sound of sticks - however Martin Colloms apparently has done some investigation on this and makes that conclusion!

I've no idea who he is but unless he can show some technical reasons for it, and not just saying "I listened to these 3 sticks, they were different!", then I'm not going to put any stock in his findings.

I'm a music listener and I know what I hear - the explanations come later. It's called empiricism. I simply took time out to record my observations, not express an opinion. Hey ho.

Chill out, I'm not criticising you, my money's on whatever the DAC does when fed from USB, that's why I said it would be interesting to stream the same file through something like Sonos via the optical digital input (using the same cable and input that the CD player uses).
 
Mike_Schmidt:IHC what downloads are there? Naim Linn....who listens to that.

What a stupid thing to say, if there wasn't a market for it they wouldn't make it available! But since you asked...

Shamelessly ripped from the links page on flac.sourceforge.net:
ArtistsLabels and Stores And this is not an exhaustive list, a quick google gives 2l.no, previously mentioned by Andrew in his blog and B&W are now also offering flac downloads.

Anyway, once again you have decided either not to bother reading what I said, or to ignore it because it doesn't suit your viewpoint. Lossless downloads are increasing, they AREN'T in a position to take over from CD completely yet but eventually it'll happen. As I've now said THREE times, nobody is claiming CD is going to die out tomorrow.

I think you have stocks somewhere in wireless or CD hurt your feelings.

Yes, that well known company "wireless", the people who make ALL wireless technology! Nice to see you really haven't bothered reading anything I've written on this subject, otherwise you'd have noticed where I've said, in this thread, that I STILL BUY CDS! I don't download, I just buy the CD and rip it to my NAS.

Take that and put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Ah, that expression takes me back. Specifically to when I was about 7 years old...
 
For me, CD is my main source and will remain so for the forseeable future, I've bought 7 CDs this week so far, and I have no plans to stop buying them. Also, I plan to replace my CDP soon, so definitely not finished as far as I'm concerned.

However, I see no reason why in the future I won't use downloaded material more than CD, providing it is of equal or better quality than current CD. How far in the future that'll be, who knows?
 
Off topic.

Mike,

I noticed your using Cardas. Are you using interconnects? I'm seriously thinking of getting the Golden Reference for my TT as they low capacitance value.
Is this how you use them? If so how do you rate them.
Cheers.
 
Hi shooter, I love my Cardas I moved from the WireWorld line of Polaris 5 matching and what a "world" of difference. To put it simple and I listened to a few cables before and during. If you want to listen to music whole heartily then pick the Cardas, but I have both Golden Cross and Golden Reference if I was going to pick one and only one to have in my system and it didnt matter where I would pick the Golden Cross purely for musical reasons. Golden reference is great and is second to none but that....Reference. If its for you to enjoy I would try Golden Cross. It really takes the Zing off the digital world but doesnt take away anything from the music but wonderful space dynamics, speed and well balanced sound. If your looking try the North America market due to the poor USD and for some reason even when converted its still alot cheaper over here. And there good for life guaranteed by Cardas. Colleen Cardas is really good to talk to and honest about the construction and use.
 
Clare Newsome:Well CDs certainly aren't dead yet - not when it comes to albums, anyway, where the vast majority of UK sales remain on physical formats. More info in our new blog here on what we bought in 2009

Well I am not sure where I fall in that trends report.

I started last spring (with a new CD player) buying lots of CDs but that has now petered out due to less interest in albums any more. (Athough I do buy quite a few documentary/history and drama CDs that get stored away safely after transferring to iTunes).

Finding a CD player that I could bear to listen for the first time ever (last April) killed off my vinyl buying and that came to a conclusion in December when I sold my last ever turntable. Alas it seems that 'CD fatigue' crept in again and - despite it sounding pretty darned good - I would rather listen to radio.

I am yet to buy a Blu-Ray player, and I probably won't until 2012 when I will replace my current DVD/HDD/Freeview recorder with a Blu-Ray/HDD/FreeviewHD recorder to coincide withe our transmitter going over to FreeviewHD.

So I am still buying DVDs aplenty and there are hundreds that (a) I will never need to replace with the better format and (b) will never be likely to be recorded onto Blu-Ray anyway. (At least for a very long time.)

3D is very unlikely to ever happen here. The wife and I both wear specs so that rules us out. (The cost of prescription 3D specs would probably be prohibitive anyway and frankly I just can't get excited about it.)

It is very probable that my CD player will get disposed of soon (and I must get around to ebaying some of my LPs).

90 percent of my enjoyment from the system is now radio (iPlayer/Freeview radio/internet radio/FM) and sound from DVDs for which 2 channel is fine. 10 percent is almost entirely youtube (not music though) and playing music CDs is pretty much 'off the radar' now.

It is a shame that it took me this long to realise that CD was never going to be a 'goer' for me (I should have learnt from the previous three mistakes with Denon, NAD and Arcam machines) and that I am at heart a radio listener and always have been. Vinyl was always very good, but frankly I was happiest with it when making up high quality compilation tapes and iTunes has rendered that completely redundant nowadays, so my old Yamaha KX-580 (long unused) was donated to my brother last year who still uses cassette a lot.

The last thing I did with VHS was to transfer my complete 'Noggin The Nog' to DVD-R (the tapes are still tucked away just in case) but I no longer have a machine with VHS capability. Until a couple of years ago we had a Panasonic DVD/VHS/HDD/Freeview recorder but that went out with the last tapes. (Except Noggin the Nog, until such time as it comes out on DVD.)
 
I relatively recently made the move back to vinyl from CDs, the format which has dominated most of my music-buying existence. Despite the higher inconvenience of playing records vs CDs I'm enjoying it. There's just that 'something' about vinyl that I don't get from CDs, however subjective it may be. And it disappears totally from downloads.

However, one frustration is the availability of vinyl. More and more vinyl is being produced now, and I'm getting used to the downloads vs regular CD album vs enhanced CD/DVD album vs deluxe vinyl packages that the record companies release for many new albums (at ascending price points), but I'm now disappointed when a vinyl version of a new album isn't available (current grip - the new record by Natalie Merchant, an artist that cries out for a vinyl platform in my opinion, is only being released on CD and iTunes etc.).

I can see the CD format holding its own for a while yet. Record companies won't relinquish it until they figure out some way to sell more whole albums via downloads. The iTunes LP format that might have gone some way to achieving that appears to have been stillborn.
 
Mike_Schmidt:Hi shooter, I love my Cardas I moved from the WireWorld line of Polaris 5 matching and what a "world" of difference. To put it simple and I listened to a few cables before and during. If you want to listen to music whole heartily then pick the Cardas, but I have both Golden Cross and Golden Reference if I was going to pick one and only one to have in my system and it didnt matter where I would pick the Golden Cross purely for musical reasons. Golden reference is great and is second to none but that....Reference. If its for you to enjoy I would try Golden Cross. It really takes the Zing off the digital world but doesnt take away anything from the music but wonderful space dynamics, speed and well balanced sound. If your looking try the North America market due to the poor USD and for some reason even when converted its still alot cheaper over here. And there good for life guaranteed by Cardas. Colleen Cardas is really good to talk to and honest about the construction and use.
Thank for the reply.

I've looked at the Golden Cross before but as the capacitance valve is more than double the Reference 12 pf to 25.5 pf i'm having reservations because of the low output of the cartridge until it gets to the phono stage. Cardas will be used solely for the TT as i use Kimber elsewhere.
How do you use your Cardas are they on the Rega.
 
To go right back to the start, CD will in the future no longer be the main music carrier. A combination of streamed and downloaded music will be. That is because new bands with new albums can access pretty much the whole word if they get onto itunes and large chunks of it with Spotify, Grooveshark and Pandora. If they stick to CDs they will have a limited number that they can distribute in a limited fashion.

There is nothing wrong with combining formats and I don't understand why those who stick to one format feel the need to lob grenades at others.

Those with big CD collections and no interest in PCs can be sure that CDs will continue at least as well served as vinyl. It is cassette, mini and lazer disc owners who have little left to serve them.
 
idc:To go right back to the start, CD will in the future no longer be the main music carrier. A combination of streamed and downloaded music will be. That is because new bands with new albums can access pretty much the whole word if they get onto itunes and large chunks of it with Spotify, Grooveshark and Pandora. If they stick to CDs they will have a limited number that they can distribute in a limited fashion.
There is nothing wrong with combining formats and I don't understand why those who stick to one format feel the need to lob grenades at others.

Those with big CD collections and no interest in PCs can be sure that CDs will continue at least as well served as vinyl. It is cassette, mini and lazer disc owners who have little left to serve them.

10/10 idc, I couldn't agree more.
 
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