Is the CD going to die?

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the What HiFi community: the world's leading independent guide to buying and owning hi-fi and home entertainment products.

chebby

Well-known member
Jun 2, 2008
1,253
26
19,220
Visit site
A turntable will be here in my living room for a lot longer than a CD player.

If it it were not for the fact that the CD player is a built-in part of my Solo-Mini then it would be on e-bay right now.

My next major system upgrade will not have a CD player at all. I will keep my CDs (in storage in the loft or at the back of the cupboard under the stairs).

I may still have to buy a few more CDs to rip (when I have no other choice) but the CD player itself is now pretty redundant. Even downloaded iTunes+ tracks (256kbps) sound good.

Lossless files played via a decent DAC is a far better experience than a CD player, and I can find & play tracks within seconds using any number of criteria.

In the short time I have had this DAC I have been ripping CDs like crazy and organizing them in ways I could never do with CDs in shelves. (I can reorganize by title, genre, artist, music type, playlist etc etc instantly at the click of a mouse and 95 percent of my collection has cover art so I can also just flick through covers like a jukebox only 100 times faster!)

And of course I can dump the entire system, music and all, in minutes onto a small inexpensive backup drive and even keep that 'off-site' - at work in my desk or at a friend's house - just in case. (Try buying duplicates of all your hundreds of CDs to keep safe at work or at a mates in case of fire/flood!)

I am hooked on this now and - like I said - no more CD player ever. Better DAC, better computer one day, even a better turntable because I love vinyl.

Even CDs themselves will be dead for increasing numbers of 'audiophiles' soon enough (at least for those who benefit from decent broadband speeds) once iTunes (and any other major download sites) make everything available in lossless for the same cost as CDs now. That will not be too long.
 

ianandyr

Well-known member
Sep 1, 2008
25
0
18,540
Visit site
An interesting perspective on this debate from the Entertainment Retailers Association.ÿ

http://uk.gizmodo.com/2008/11/24/mp3_best_selling_format_of_all.html

On balance I think this depresses me. While it supports my earlier opinions if the majority are going to take to relatively low-fi downloading that does not encourage me to think that the high-quality downloads I want to see are just around the corner.
 

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts