CD format war and resultant music players

The formats for audiophiles will remain what they are today. Audiophiles will stick with what they already own for music ... vinyl, CDs; and SACDs. At some point, even audiophiles will not go along with replacing their music collections for relatively minor improvements in playback quality. I know that even I am not up to replacing 2000+ CD's (did that already with vinyl). I am open to hard drive based systems, but that is because I would be copying my own CD's to the hard drive.

Regards, Rich

SV:

If you take my comments to the next logical step, purchasing top flight equipment makes total sense. If you know upfront that you will not be replacing your music collection anytime soon, if ever ... all these format wars become moot. You should then purchase the equipment that will allow for as near total enjoyment as possible with your current choice of media. In fact, buy an additional back-up player, if you think that your current choice of media may not survive another twenty years. Given my listening habits, how much time I have available, my declining hearing, saving for retirement, my wife's love for cruises, etc. ... plunking down sizeable cash to get a marginally (and debateable) better version of the Byrds singing "Hey Joe" (multiply this by 2000, btw) is not occurring.

A new format may make sense for new releases ... but you will find that as you get older you are not buying all that much from new artists. Same argument holds for video ... how many copies of the ultimate Godfather collection can one own?

Regards, Rich

SV:

"Perhaps it would only take 2 versus 5 years for the audio chip to fall into place."

But who would care? Yes, SACD was an improvement over Redbook CD, but not that major and not to the point that I was willing to own a duplicate music library. At the time that I purchased my SACD player five years ago (SONY SCD 555ES), I did so because I needed a new CD player ... otherwise I wouldn't have done it ... well, the good price helped also. To date, I have maybe 10 duplicate SACDs/CDs.

It would have to be one hell of an audio chip to get me to bite. The promise of additional video information is meaningless to me ... I prefer listening to my music, not watching it.

As I said previously, perfecting the hard drive interests me ... but because it would result in a hardware purchase, not a software one.

Regards, Rich

SV:

Perhaps one reason that you are not reading conclusive reports from reliable sorces is that many of the printed media reviewers are older and started out in this hobby 20 or more years ago and so the idea of using a PC with hifi equipment is not intuitive or desireable. I am 49 years old, have been around hifi gear literally all my life (my dad was an electronics repair technician), and would not think of having the PC hooked up to my stereos. I just enjoy buying CD's and playing them in the CD player. Downloading doesn't replace the going to Tower or Virgin or J&R and looking through the stacks.

Regards, Rich