End of the CD player...?

[paulmurr]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8368895.stm

Do you think that they're a bit premature? I still like to buy CDs but if you look at sales figures it appears that I'm in the minority.

[telecat]

Linn occupy a very small part of the market for CD. I wouldn't consider the current lineup of Players as they are expensive for what they do.

[OldSkoolRS]

I've recently dug out my old NAD CD player and did some comparing with my Sony BluRay player and it sounds much better than the Sony. In turn this has got me listening to more CDs at home again, so I'll probably be buying more discs....I hope they don't stop selling them now.

[Plotloss]

Linn Records have a line of ultra high bandwidth digital content thats higher quality than CD.

They also have a line of digital media players which support their ultra high bandwidth content.

So its not really a surprise that they're canning CD. They're just pushing their content on their players.

[paulmurr]

I'm just wondering if this is the tip of the iceberg... a sign of things to come? Will CD players end up thought of in the same nostalgic way that we think about vinyl now?

[OldSkoolRS]

Well even if they do, you can still buy a turntable and LPs today nearly 30 years after the CD player was launched. Hopefully that will be the case for CDs too. If they get replaced with higher resolution discs like SACD/DVD-A then I wouldn't complain, the players are likely to be backwards compatable anyway and hopefully sound just as good.

[telecat]

It should be the Blu-Ray Music standard. The Players all support it and HDMI can carry it to a external DAC. However CD is cheap to produce.

[OldSkoolRS]

There's a whole thread about how jitter can effect sound quality over on AVForums. I'm not sure it's a fair comparison, but I've found my BluRay player playing CDs via HDMI is a poor second compared to using my NAD CD player's analogue outputs into the external inputs of my amp. I want to listen to disc after disc compared to wanting to turn off the BluRay player after a couple of songs. Funny thing is that they are the very same (analogue) inputs that I used to connect my SACD player to, so it seems that bypassing all the analogue to digital to analogue stages really helps.

Sorry for going a bit OT there.

[koenig999]

paulmurr said:

I'm just wondering if this is the tip of the iceberg... a sign of things to come? Will CD players end up thought of in the same nostalgic way that we think about vinyl now?

Vinyl Nostalgia? I still manage to buy new and some s/h vinyl every week - there is no sign of it dying off. Not botherd too much about CD, they are convienient, but not of a quality.

Koenig

[Techn0]

koenig999 said:

paulmurr said:

I'm just wondering if this is the tip of the iceberg... a sign of things to come? Will CD players end up thought of in the same nostalgic way that we think about vinyl now?

Vinyl Nostalgia? I still manage to buy new and some s/h vinyl every week - there is no sign of it dying off. Not botherd too much about CD, they are convienient, but not of a quality.

Koenig

Exactly, many of my favourite tunes are in my vinyl collection.

[telecat]

OldSkoolRS said:

There's a whole thread about how jitter can effect sound quality over on AVForums. I'm not sure it's a fair comparison, but I've found my BluRay player playing CDs via HDMI is a poor second compared to using my NAD CD player's analogue outputs into the external inputs of my amp. I want to listen to disc after disc compared to wanting to turn off the BluRay player after a couple of songs. Funny thing is that they are the very same (analogue) inputs that I used to connect my SACD player to, so it seems that bypassing all the analogue to digital to analogue stages really helps.

Sorry for going a bit OT there.

Not a Problem. Nobody has gone "Hi-Fi" with HDMI yet and Jitter has always been a problem. A Good DAC from Naim, Chord or ARCAM with HDMI and the Jitter reducing tech they have should produce a good sound. The Problem being that Nobody has gone there..... yet!

It's another clue to the fact that real "Hi-FI" actually does sound "that good".

[nelly1]

It's got nothing to do with sound quality.

It's all about convenience.

CD will continue to thrive, albeit for a smaller audience, in exactly the same way that vinyl does.

[andy_s]

As it's a convenience society I'd think that CD has had its day for the mainstream, and rather than ending up being a niche medium with benefits (like vinyl) it'll end up like tape cassettes.

Anything new I decide is 'good' gets bought on vinyl where possible.

[10 Pence Short]

I've spent a bit of time listening to Spotify lately. Mostly on a cheapy system via the laptop.

Last week I hooked it up the my 'proper' hi fi and did some back to back with some CDs (played via one of the early Sony SACD CD players).

My god, the quality from Spotify is crap in the grand scheme of things. Bloody awful, in fact.

I gave myself a slap and vowed to keep Spotify relegated to the kitchen for when I'm on cooking duties.

[Lost soul]

andy_s said:

Anything new I decide is 'good' gets bought on vinyl where possible.

But they do not relese new stuff on vinyl , or do they

[andy_s]

Lost soul said:

andy_s said:

Anything new I decide is 'good' gets bought on vinyl where possible.

But they do not relese new stuff on vinyl , or do they

Not all, but lots of stuff that isn't sclub7esque gets released on vinyl still. The quantities are appreciably lower but that means there are less in circulation which makes it a bit more 'special' in a way. My last 2 box sets were Radiohead and Foo Fighters - great sleeve art, books, pictures etc plus an undeniably warm rich sound.

[Lost soul]

andy_s said:

Lost soul said:

andy_s said:

Anything new I decide is 'good' gets bought on vinyl where possible.

But they do not relese new stuff on vinyl , or do they

Not all, but lots of stuff that isn't sclub7esque gets released on vinyl still. The quantities are appreciably lower but that means there are less in circulation which makes it a bit more 'special' in a way. My last 2 box sets were Radiohead and Foo Fighters - great sleeve art, books, pictures etc plus an undeniably warm rich sound.

I do not even have a tunrntable but this news that vinyl is still available cheers me up for some reason

[telecat]

Time to get the HiFi magazine out then! Vinyl sources tend to advertise in them and they do reviews, HiFi World and HiFi News And Record review have sections for vinyl.

I like CD and would like to see more Hi Band music. Unfortunately SACD has retreated to Classical and Jazz mainly. DVD-Audio is rarely released but is good as a carrier for Hi band downloads. Linn recommend you backup their files and have a recommendation of a basic free DVD-Audio maker.

[paddyhasneeds]

I suspect that for a company such as LINN it's less about the death of CD as a medium/means of obtaining music and more about how people play it back and listen to it.

I have a shelf of CDs above my desk as I type, but it's not often I take one and listen to it directly - it's ripped and I play it back via iTunes to my Meridian box.

I still like the fact that I own a CD though, I don't like the fact that I (currently at least) am expected to pay the same for an electronic download that I am for a physical CD.

You only have to look at the likes of Naim, AVI, Meridian to see that playback is going increasingly streamer/computer dominated and this gives them a whole new opportunity to market more expensive products to audiophiles or (as I suspect they actually want) people who will simply pay a few thousand quid for something that looks nice, sounds decent and is simple to use.

[bored-of-coding]

I had a £2000 ish (Ikemi) Linn CD player, and I sold it to finance the Linn streamer, Majik DS, which is second to bottom of the range .. It absolutely knocks the socks off the Ikemi. I really think the bottom has dropped out of the high end CD market - as soon as they reach £1000ish on ebay, they're competing with the high end streamer market, and there really is no contest - quite apart from sound quality, picking one of your cd's via, say, and ipod, then playing it really does unlock your music collection!