Are CD players dead

Pettyofficer wrote: "A Monopoly of Products/Formats will only lead to cheaper manufacturing, and less Sound Quality. A decade later people will find something amiss with their Computer Audio Music, and regress back to CD". Gee, I agree with much of what you wrote in this thread, but I have a hard time with this statement. There is no analog poetry or magic in lasers and shinny plastic disks. The only thing I see that CD has going for it in the long run is the current standing stock of titles in a reasonably durable format. Hopefully we will progress forward to combine the ease of use of iTunes with the quality of HD formats.

Speaking of iTunes, it has been pretty well established in this and other threads that the stand alone CD player is dying as a tool for mass marketers to sell, and for the masses to buy to play music. The CD player is not being killed by HD tracks and low volume and difficult to implement audiophile computer software however. It is being killed by universial disk players, and by iTunes and all the iPods, iPhones, iMacs and yes, even PC computers that run this crappy format. A bit ironic isnt it. Remember when Steve Jobs wouldn't do color on the Mac until Apple could "do it right" in high resolution and high color density? Too bad Apple wasn't that descriminating with audio resolution in there products. Hopefully we are not stuck in an infinite loop of mediocrity. In any case, I do not believe "competition" for non-disk driven digital formats is going to come from either analog or redbook.

"There is no Analog Poetry or magic in Lazers and shiny plastic disks". At 10 to 12 Bits (1985-1995) due to CD
monopoly at the time leading to cheaper Sound Quality-what
did you expect? LP was on its way out, supposedly! What
other ways did the manufacturers cheapen out on production? Proves my point that without competition a
Format Monopoly (Computer Audio Downloads) means big profits supported by low-low-low-low quality. A condition
that Manufacturers would love to recreate again. It means you end up with the short end of the stick, with no alternatives!

Don't send the flowers just yet....

People tend to see less value in non-physical items, like music downloads and I note with interest that since it emerged in the 1990's digital music has been hugely popular with fans, but for online music companies and their investors it has almost never been profitable...

The clear future since all computer files can go up to a 24 bit 192 kHz
Word length is night and day better sounding then red book cd.
This is why Bryston,came out with their great player as well as others to complement their
Dac or yours.By having no moving parts you dramatically lower the noise floor with a external hard drive, or thumb drive.This is the future
Hi Rez down loads ! !

I just want to mention mpegs I do not consider hi quality.
At Hd downloads every week they are adding on also at least several
Others.I ripped almost 800 CDs high quality flac files 10 at a time
Over a few weeks then it is permanent just back it up .
I am no computer wiz I just went on utube videos and watched how it is done. Well worth the effort. If you have a IPad or stood you can just look at all the albums including album art within seconds it is that easy.