Phillips no longer producing transports

Folks, remember this is just a hobby so let's enjoy it. A bit of side discussion doesn't hurt, so long as it's not beating a dead horse.

Agreed Jafant, Rich and Nonoise made cogent points. I think the likely outcome is with cd sales declining, some manufacturers may go down the server route rather than tooling up to build their own transport and just see what happens in future. The larger players with more corporate funds may well build a proprietary transport mechanism or negotiate an OEM contract with someone like Esoteric. Of course doing so means designing around the new transport from scratch.

It is likely Phillips won't relinquish the patent for their Pro 2 transport, but unless cd sales increase which seems unlikely, Phillips for one are out of the transport-building business.

However as Rich eluded to, their are other transport options such as using a cd/dvd rom drive as used by Cary, Oppo/MSB etc. Boulder are doing something similar and use a very accurate cd/dvd rom drive sourced from the Supercomputer industry. Their 1021 network player is ideally placed for the future with a readily available/replaceable transport mechanism and the capability to stream over ethernet.

It will be interesting to see if shiny discs have a revival one day like vinyl!

Stream Unlimited in its previous iteration was the Philips Audio Video Innovation Centre based in Vienna. They developed new technologies and modules for Philips into ready for market products. Whilst under Philips umbrella, this centre likely developed the cd-pro2 transport for the company, who in turn later released the CD-Pro2LF in 2006 after Philips brought product development in-house. Incidentally 'LF' is short for "Lead free" which was required after the RoHS directive introduced on the 1st of July, 2006. So to clarify, Stream Unlimited did not manufacture Pro-2LF transports as used by Ayon, ARC and others. These were produced up to recently by Philips who have now ceased production. As far as I can tell, Stream Unlimited offer an optical storage product as well as software, hardware, wireless and compliance services.

I received feedback from one manufacturer who stated they will likely move out of disc spinners altogether toward a more profitable and sustainable business model. Boulder are already part way there with a hybrid disc/streamer product.

09-10-13: Schubert
Sony no baloney.

..sounds like Schubert's unfinished symphony :D

Isochronism, in the unlikely event your Phillips Pro2 transport fails in future the most likely part to fail would be the laser. If you contact Naim they should be prepared to sell you a laser assembly to keep on stock. My next cd player will have a Pro2-LF transport & I plan to get it shipped with a spare laser assembly mainly for resale value. Obviously being able to advertise your player with a spare laser will give assurance to any prospective buyer.

Iso, i'm pretty much the same. My next cdp will be a Vitus SCD-025 which I plan to keep for the long haul. One spare laser on hand is good insurance.

09-11-13: Knghifi
I say good ridden to Philip Transports. All my cd players with Philip drives had problems. Many were very expensive Krells. Sounds fantastic when working but never for long. Now 100% computer audio with music backup on USB drives.

Fair enough Knghifi. It is understandable if you've had a bad run with Phillips drives the Company's announcement would probably be welcomed. I haven't owned a Pro2 transport long enough to have an opinion one way or the other. I plan to maintain a high end cd player, but add a streamer and stream internet radio & my My Tunes library wirelessly over a high speed, wide bandwidth wifi network. However that is really just for background listening. For critical listening, rbcd & sacd's will still remain my reference.

Thanks for your input Reb