CD players = dead?

With the release by Marantz a mainstream player recently of their Reference line CD/SACD player the SA10 that includes their proprietary transport mechanism designed as part of this product development program and proprietary software for 1-Bit processing upscaling all signals to DSD suggests that the cd format is alive and well as a niche technology. Clearly cd's are not going anywhere anytime soon. Of course Tower Records HMV and so on have been made redundant by streaming. Mass market watches movies and streams music. Still we have radio stations and new vinyl manufacturing facilities and technologies emerging. Premium brands like Linn have entered the streaming market too. It's fascinating because wired beats wireless for reliability yet convenience beats reliability! And discs are better quality than streaming yet streaming is far more popular as it is much more accessible and cheaper. CD's will remain a niche, and SACD and similar high quality discs another small niche. My understanding only.

CD is not dead. People who say it is , never liked CD to begin with, and they never had a great CD based system.

A sad commentary, but true nonetheless. 

Very true grannyring, USA is fad run society and Audio has become a fad operation as well .

Vinyl is big with millennials right now, but this is just a fad and deemed to be the cool thing to do. Nothing to do with a desire for better sound quality. It will pass. All serious digital innovation is not going towards CD players. New models may come out as some high end companies seek to milk a product category in the decline stage of its life cycle. 

It’s almost the vinyl story repeating itself all over again.

Consumer oriented audio companies may drop them, but esoteric brands will continue to produce them - cos those with collections will need to play them

But I do see the distant future marketplace being CD free.
- I haven’t bought a CD in ages,
- but I download digital albums and I still buy vinyl.

Are streaming services that way of the future? Probably

Vinyl seems to be re-surging - due in part to the cover art and the included liner notes, which you can actually read without a magnifying glass. I never rear the notes in a CD.

Perhaps someone will include liner notes with downloads someday?

But is the vinyl resurgence due to superior sound quality or is it more a younger generation "fad" that will lose it's appeal very soon? 

Personally - I find I actually put "vinyl" on to listen to it - i.e. the entire album, whereas I tend put digital music on to provide background music because of it's "convenience"

Who knows what the future will bring :-)

Regards...

As bdp24 said, if you have discs you need something to play them on. Yes, you can get digital many ways, but even though this is so, does not mean that CD players are dead. Oppo just released their two newest players, T+A has released several very good players recently, and there are still a number of good or very good players being manufactured. They will be around for a long time to come. And if manufacturers are smart, they'll take a hint and implement a player with a transport, DAC, and other digital capabilities including streaming. Not everyone wants to have a bunch of boxes in their systems and the resulting bunch of cables.

I used to think about ripping all my CDs, but now there is streaming, I've totally forgotten about that. I can stream when I want to stream and play CDs when I have the urge.  Long live the CD player.... but please put more features in them so they do more than just play a CD.

I think many people had thought (myself included) that turntables were obsolete when CDs and players came out. I bought an early Phillips unit around 1984 in Germany. But CD players kept improving as record albums became more scarce. Nowadays many. many audiophiles will swear by the superiority of analog over digital.

I don’t think CD players are obsolete at all....

CD, DVD, Blue-Ray, 4K disc player will all be dead. Everything is on the cloud.

Now that most of us have all the music on CD that we ever wanted, many would like us to believe that that medium is dead, much like vinyl a decade ago. Look, CDs are not as sexy as vinyl and not as transparent as some downloaded music, but they're just so convenient. I can’t help but feel that it’s the music industry that benefits from the rumor that CD is dead and will soon be obsolete. I’ll just wait awhile and hope that when that belief takes hold I’ll be able to buy a Wadia or dcs player at pennies on the dollar. CD works just fine for me, obsolete or not!

I don’t think CD players are dead, but they are on life support😎 Well, that was strong. Let's say in a long term care facility. I ripped my total collection and added Tidal. I now see both at once with Roon. This is the future and this we all know. Great cd players still sound great, but less and less time and money will be spent on innovation and development of CD players. With this will come a slow end....I don’t see this happening fast, next few years, but it will happen slowly over the next 10-15 years.

I continue to use my (15+ year old) Electrocompaniet EMC-1UP, and am perfectly content. The quality of the sound is superb, and I do not mind the minor inconvenience of changing discs.

Cheers,

Tony C.

I have a fair number of HDCD discs and there are few HDCD DACs, so I'd like to be able to listen to them once in a while with the HDCD in place.

But I listen to computer audio several hours a day (98.63% ripped CDs; a few downloads) and only spin a disc every few months.

I would say either format is good. I use both. I don't think CD players are dead. There is 30+ years of silver discs out there. Good enough reason in itself to have a CD player in your system.....

Bdp24,

Very well said and valid points,
I say pick your poison and go with it and enjoy the music you like.

Best,

Kenny.

I finally purchased a DAC, and then a server I thought the sound was as good as my CDP, so I sold my CDP. I still enjoy listing to CD'S so I went with the Cambridge transport and now have the best of both formats. I don't think CD's are going away anytime soon, nor that most folks will stop listing to their CD librarys.

I still use CDP.
Since my Luxman D08U arrived I don't remember  last time I used tidal or aurender or DS. 
Regards 

Yes I Agree,

As with all things audio, they can be better than servers/streamers and vice versa.


Kenny.

No they are not dead. They will not get back to the level of popularity they had in the 80s, 90s and 00s, but they will continue to be sold and improved for the foreseeable future.

As with all things audio, they can be better than servers/streamers and vice versa.

One reason is the way to go is with a transport and a DAC .
Cambridge led the way on this route.

They are not dead because people have large CD collections from the last 30 years. And some prefer to play single CD/SACDs.

It takes time to copy a large number of CDs to a server, but is more convenient playback.

Buying online digital music is more expensive than buying CD/SACDs today.

Internet streaming is listening to someone else's choice of music, not personal classics from your own collection.

I own two dedicated CD players and use them often.  I also own an Oppo 105 and Chromecast Audio that I use for network streaming(Spotify, Pandora, network music files, etc.).  All methods can sound incredible as well as pretty dull.  IMO, the most important element to great sound quality is the recording.

Bill

Agreed CD spinners of all types seem in steady decline production-wise. As far as sound quality vs streams as with most things it depends. You can put together an amazing great sounding CD based system or a great streaming system these days. Just go with whatever sounds best to you and offers the ergonomics and convenience that you desire.

Madavid0,

Cd players are mostly obsolete but some people probably will use them for quit a while.
A server and or streamer is so much easier to use especially when a person has a lot of digital music,
Do they sound better maybe,the sound quality is more about The processing of those digital bits and we have lots of really nice Dac's for not a whole lot of money.

I personally haven't used a CD player or transport in 6 to 7 years.

Best,

Kenny.