CD format war and resultant music players

Per Txp1, "The next "audiophile" media will be vinyl. Oops, its already happening. Vinyl and vinyl playback systems are booming . . ."

Well, that sure sounds nice but let's take a look at the facts (took about 30 seconds to find, by the way). Per the RIAA, vinyl LP sales dropped 25% in 2005 from 2004; vinyl singles (which dominate vinyl in unit shipments) fell by 35.4%. These followed 2004's declines of 11.9% and 7.3% respectively, which followed 2003's drops of 11.5% and 14%, which came after 2002's falls of 23.7% and 20.8% . . .

That said, LPs have kept up their solid 0.7% market share (if you don't include downloads, that is - if you do, vinyl's share is much, much lower).

Is this what you call a "booming" market? Maybe if the boom comes from a collapse into vacuum, perhaps . . .

A lot of people have been working very hard for a long time to optimize CD playback. The likelihood of a leap forward at this point is very remote.

I think the issue here is not so much sound quality, but convenience. When you have thousands of CD's then it gets really hard to locate one specific track on one specific CD. PC based systems make a huge difference here. The sound quality can be the same if done with care.

I believe we are on a threshold of an explosion of this type of system. Two years ago it took twelve 120Gb drives to assemble 1Tb of raid storage. Now the same can be done with four drives at a third of the price. These are actual figures - I just added my second Tb of storage.

The only thing still missing is a good ADC solution for home use. Not everyone has access to professional equipment and the average sound card falls down seriously in this area. This won't bother CD only people though.

I have just been able to aquire an MFSL Ultradisk version of REM Murmur. The improvement in sound quality over the standard version is far greater than anything I could get by upgrading my equipment. I believe that in many cases we have reached the limit of what the record labels are prepared to market.

It isn't my style, but I have wondered what would happen if two keen music collectors, each with a few Tb of music met up and did the obvious thing with a network cable. Short of a re-enactment of prohibition, there is no stopping this.

I do agree with you that music server will most likely be well received by the general public in the immediate future. Perhaps the current audiophile DAC manufacturers would adapt their DACs with proper hook up for the computer. There are different kinds of ports on the motherboard. It does not have to be through the soundcard if they really want to develop the DACs. In my specific case however, it seems that spending serious money on top end CDP and preamp is unwise given the CD market trend and the music server technology. While spending money on music server right away does not get me far beyond my current music quality attainment.

We are not dealing with the far future here. I suspect two years from now this music server setup will present itself with a much more developed technology. We all know the computer industry sheds its face by the month. Let's see what the audiophile DAC people will do. In fact the CDP people have their own DAC board inside their equipment. This DAC thing might as well be their evolving product to stay in the game.

You mentioned about not many people have "professional" equipment. You also mentioned about your new acquisition. Would you comment on yours as well as other professional pieces out there. How are they hooked up? Especially how do they sound in compared to traditional equipment? Thanks.