Is it unwise to buy a state of the art CD player at this time?

[amirm]

Amir,

Can you elaborate,

Sorry for the late reply Russ. Went on a weekend trip .

Go to any audio show and maybe, maybe one out of 20 demos are done using CDs. The rest are from digital servers. Talk to the manufacturers about CD players and completely and irrevocably say it is a dead format with respect to player marketability. Resell on CD players is going to become really poor if it has not already.

If you want to keep spinning CDs, you can do that. I think I read that you had an Oppo. Get a great DAC and use that as a transport.

There is a great line in the old movie Wall Street:

"You know, at one time there must've been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I'll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw. Now how would you have liked to have been a stockholder in that company? "

So, no, you don't want to buy the last flip phone just because it is about to go out of production. CD is a dead format. It just doesn't know it.

Download a copy of Roon. Rip a few CDs on your computer and listen and use it on the computer. If that doesn't change your outlook on this purchase, I don't know what would!

 

[analog brother]

Not me, I still have my LP albums. I have never followed the "in crowd"! I was hesitant on buying the Esoteric at first. Not now for sure.

we tread the same path, brother!

 

[analog brother]

Yes, they should never have bought those CD players in the first place

this time, it's for real!

keep cd's alive, brothers. don't convert to computers.

 

[microstrip]

(...) Download a copy of Roon. Rip a few CDs on your computer and listen and use it on the computer. If that doesn't change your outlook on this purchase, I don't know what would!

Did Roon solve its issues with classical music database organization? Last time I read about it they openly recognized the problem and promised to look at it in the future. We had thread in WBF concerning the subject http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?20450-Roon-absolutely-sucks-for-classical

 

[Al M.]

CD is a dead format. It just doesn't know it.

As long as I can get any music that I want from Amazon on CD, which is the case, someone must have forgotten to tell CD that it's dead.

 

[fas42]

Down here, we have JB Hi-Fi, which has become the entertainment king of the hill retailer, and is everywhere. They built their reputation on having every music CD you might want, or didn't know existed - and they still are doing this. Bins and bins of music, on real media, to explore - specials galore always ... no, CD is not dead ...

https://www.jbhifi.com.au/music/browse/ ...

 

[Sharp 1080]

The industry survives on "new and shiny". Not to sound make this sound like a conspiracy theory, but whom exactly is screaming that CD is dead? The same thing occurred with vinyl, and vinyl is even more popular now? Of course streaming and downloads are popular now. It has to be otherwise companies will fold and we have the "same old things" with nothing "new and shiny" to sell. What will replace streaming and downloading a few years from now?

My other theory is the married guys got the "what is this stuff still doing here" lecture with having so many CD's taking up space in the house.

 

[Mobiusman]

Sorry for the late reply Russ. Went on a weekend trip .

Go to any audio show and maybe, maybe one out of 20 demos are done using CDs. The rest are from digital servers. Talk to the manufacturers about CD players and completely and irrevocably say it is a dead format with respect to player marketability. Resell on CD players is going to become really poor if it has not already.

If you want to keep spinning CDs, you can do that. I think I read that you had an Oppo. Get a great DAC and use that as a transport.

There is a great line in the old movie Wall Street:

"You know, at one time there must've been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I'll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw. Now how would you have liked to have been a stockholder in that company? "

So, no, you don't want to buy the last flip phone just because it is about to go out of production. CD is a dead format. It just doesn't know it.

Download a copy of Roon. Rip a few CDs on your computer and listen and use it on the computer. If that doesn't change your outlook on this purchase, I don't know what would!

Thanks Amir. I will do that, although I am not familiar with Roon. Does the free 14 day trial give me a good sense of it's capabilities?

 

[amirm]

Thanks Amir. I will do that, although I am not familiar with Roon. Does the free 14 day trial give me a good sense of it's capabilities?

For sure. Just rip a few of your CDs on your computer so that you are ready for it.

Also if you can, get a trial of Tidal while you are at it. It's use is completely integrated/invisible in Roon. All of a sudden, you wind up with a million albums you can find and play as you search for them in Roon!

 

[amirm]

As long as I can get any music that I want from Amazon on CD, which is the case, someone must have forgotten to tell CD that it's dead.

Well, I can't get what I want on CD often.

What drives mass formats is mass consumer. And mass consumer has absolutely no use for CD as a format. Heck, they have no use for any kind of local music anymore. Streaming/cloud storage provides them with ultimate experience. With that support eroding, CD will, by definition be on decline.

It is a slow decline to be sure, but it is a decline.

Personally it seems very silly to me that we would want to continue to transmit digital data to consumers by stamping plastics and spinning it with motors and such. All in such a low capacity medium. The format needs to be shot in the head, and shot good.

 

[fas42]

And it's about time we got rid of those silly hard drives in PCs too ... I don't know, reading and writing digital data, in lousy magnetic materials, for God's sake, and spinning it with motors and such ... .

 

[NorthStar]

Some members here said that the CD is dead, but is it really?

• http://anewdomain.net/2015/08/04/ted-rall-cd-dead-heres-shouldnt/ ? Smart article.
• http://audiophilereview.com/audiophile-music/physical-media-is-dead.html ? Interesting spin.
• https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/04/music-died-cds-listen-laptop ? Fun article by a fun lady.
• http://ajournalofmusicalthings.com/the-cd-still-not-dead/ ? Reality check!
• http://www.mtv.com/news/2751573/cds-dead-kanye-west/ ? This guy is the last person on this planet I want to hear from!
__________

"Maybe you’ve abandoned CDs, and consider the format to be completely dead. However, you’d be wrong. From Forbes:

All of the music industry news for the last year or so has been directed at oncoming music streaming steamroller and the downfall of the music download, but what’s interesting is that our good old physical CD still remains a huge part of the music business. The latest report from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the music industry’s trade group, shows the 2014 sales of the bright and shiny disc at $1.85 billion, or about 27% of the total U.S. recorded music revenue.

There’s no denying that CDs are on the way out, with unit sales falling another 16% in 2014 from the previous year. It’s true that it’s just a matter of time before the format goes the way of the vinyl record (although there’s been a recent resurgence), the 8 track tape and the cassette. What’s interesting is that the 144.1 million CDs officially reported as sold by the RIAA in 2014 doesn’t represent the real total by a long shot."
__________

Personally, I will die and someone will inherit my CD music collection...lucky sunnabaggun! :b ...And my SACDs too...DVDs, Blu-rays, HD DVDs, LPs,
See, I approximately stream less than 0.01% of all my music listening sessions. Kids are alright.
CDs are everywhere...Salvation Army stores, thrift shops, second-hand music stores, libraries, online everywhere. /// Walmart and London Drug and Best Buy and Costco stores.
We'll all be dead way before the CD disappears. It's just the way it is...we live in a physical/material world, and if you still don't believe that just look @ vinyls. And just like vinyls CDs will also have their own comeback. Wanna bet?

This thread is good, because if a new state-of-the art CD Processor like the Spectral SDR-4000SV is just being released...it should tell us all there is to know about the future of CDs. And it's the same with the Turntable world revival...state-of-the-art turntables being built day in day out.

I'm always checking the music threads...classical, jazz...and check for free music samples online, even on youtube, and if I like I just buy the CD/SACD.
It's the same thing I used to do @ music stores; I listened to CDs with headphones and buy the ones (CDs) that were recommended from music mags. I was buying few dozens every couple weeks or so. I bought tons of CDs like that. I also like to go to libraries. I love to educate myself. Do you ever go to libraries and get books and music? You'd be real surprised the good books and the good music you can find there. You just borrow them, for a month, or more by renewing, and all for free.

Kids are alright.

 

[NorthStar]

Personally it seems very silly to me that we would want to continue to transmit digital data to consumers by stamping plastics and spinning it with motors and such. All in such a low capacity medium. The format needs to be shot in the head, and shot good.

You got a point there Amir: https://www.theguardian.com/environ...s-urge-geological-congress-human-impact-earth

"The new epoch should begin about 1950, the experts said, and was likely to be defined by the radioactive elements dispersed across the planet by nuclear bomb tests, although an array of other signals, including plastic pollution, soot from power stations, concrete, and even the bones left by the global proliferation of the domestic chicken were now under consideration."

 

[analog brother]

we are heading towards a digital dystopia.
autonomous living? or autonomous existentialism?

 

[Fiddle Faddle]

The problems with digital rhythm & timing that he discusses have now been solved, but they have been a significant headache for a long time

Yep. One of the very biggest problems with digital and it has been one of the easiest ways to distinguish 16 bit as well - even when noise shaped using the most modern, sophisticated algorithms. I've always called this issue the "digital head cold" effect myself, because it has a similar effect on the music as having a bad head cold has when listening to live music. Mind you (and we are getting OT here), but every time I pass a live musician performing in the street - even if they are an incompetent, tuneless ear-sore attempting to strum a $200 guitar, I have to keep asking myself have we really solved that problem. And I have to day we still haven't - not to my ears. We have only mitigated it. There is still something about the sheer immediacy, effortlessness and perfect, unforced timing and delivery of an actual live performance that eludes even the very best audio reproduction technology even today, no matter whether it is analogue or digital. State of the art equipment driving state of the art electrostatics might go a very long way, but going a long way isn't the same as solving something. I think the "blame" can equally be shared by recording equipment including microphones, the people who make those recordings as well as the reproduction chain at our end. Nothing is blameless in that whole chain in my view.

 

[SCAudiophile]

OP: IMHO, it is not unwise to buy a SOTA CD player at this time; like vinyl and SACD, which are often reported as dead, it is far from dead. RIAA reports 144.1 million in 2014 "down" from
the prior year but from the post below, it's acknowledged that the total is off by a long shot. RIAA data may not be counting all the discs that come out of Japan, Hong Kong,
Russia, Germany, Norway and many other places where what some would call 'niche' or 'specialty' labels are still spinning up some great CDs, XRCDs, etc....all in all, I doubt
you would have anything to worry about in our lifetime. As was also mentioned, look at Amazon and many other sources to witness just how much existing and new music
is being made available on this 'dead' format. People/sources who say things like this usually have some other axe to grind or agenda for some form; the commentary
is as laughable as those who say vinyl is dead...

Find a great CD/SACD player and enjoy that along with other 'more modern' forms of musical playback!

 

[fas42]

There is still something about the sheer immediacy, effortlessness and perfect, unforced timing and delivery of an actual live performance that eludes even the very best audio reproduction technology even today, no matter whether it is analogue or digital. State of the art equipment driving state of the art electrostatics might go a very long way, but going a long way isn't the same as solving something. I think the "blame" can equally be shared by recording equipment including microphones, the people who make those recordings as well as the reproduction chain at our end. Nothing is blameless in that whole chain in my view.

I dispute that. All those qualities of the live performance are possible to achieve, especially in digital, but the underlying "problem" is that people don't take to heart the fact that on the playback side, everything matters! Yes, people will glibly repeat this mantra, but they don't do enough in the real world to "fix" it! Just tying together a bunch of gear with brilliant specs is almost guaranteed not to get the quality one is after, it will require "debugging" to nail adequate performance for the "live" experience.

Overall, the big failure is the disinclination to think in system terms - it's always about getting some brilliant new 'part' to make things better, which IMO is a fast track to being disappointed in the long run.

 

[marty]

There is still something about the sheer immediacy, effortlessness and perfect, unforced timing and delivery of an actual live performance that eludes even the very best audio reproduction technology even today, no matter whether it is analogue or digital.

Nobody in their right mind can possibly disagree with this statement.

 

[Ron Resnick]

. . . There is still something about the sheer immediacy, effortlessness and perfect, unforced timing and delivery of an actual live performance that eludes even the very best audio reproduction technology even today, no matter whether it is analogue or digital. State of the art equipment driving state of the art electrostatics might go a very long way, but going a long way isn't the same as solving something. I think the "blame" can equally be shared by recording equipment including microphones, the people who make those recordings as well as the reproduction chain at our end. Nothing is blameless in that whole chain in my view.

+++++1

 

[sujay]

Nobody in their right mind can possibly disagree with this statement.

Absolutely agree.....the fact that one can replicate a live performance is a myth in my view.