will the day come when?

Discrete CD players may become hard to find, but I reckon decent Universal DVD/Harddrive players will be around for a long time.
Given the amount of money MR & MRS Average (like me) have invested in CD's and DVD's over the past 20+ years, it would be a brave manufacturer who stops making backward-compatible players. I know how popular mp3 is now, but as was pointed out already, broadband/cable internet is still being rolled out. And if you make up your own mp3 library, where are you likely to rip from? Your (and your friend's) CD's, where you can set the compression you want.

Personally, I can't be bothered with audio files. I have an mp3 player that now mostly gets used as a radio, because I don't want to spend ages in front of a computer ripping CD's or downloading & transferring files, to then try to listen with headphones on a noisy train. Why would I, when I can listen to crystal clear music from my CD's through my home system.

Maybe I'll get a hard drive server one day and dump all my CD's uncompressed, but I'll still want it to have a decent CD player built in.

For me, one of the most fascinating things about Audiogon is how multiple threads run in parallel exploring a single theme from different perspectives. Here is one running concurrently on the impact of iTunes on contributors listening habits.

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?icomp&1177199126&openmine&zzCkorody&4&5#Ckorody

Each to his or her own of course, but the thread makes it pretty clear that most (not all - most) people really prefer the convenience of the hard drive based interface once they get into it.

There is no doubt that the CD will last for a long time - but the original premise of the thread was "will it be replaced by something better". Inevitably of course the answer is yes. But I think that the consensus is that it is unlikely that it will be a physical (platter based) format.

i'm not convinced most a goners prefer hd approach tho. when i listen to music i do nothing else really. i enjoy the ritual and try to replicate a live musical event in my listening space. as noted earlier, pc generation and MOST people listen to music with a different mindset. convenience, to me, is hardly in the picture. i am convinced that I am in the minority when it comes to this tho. i would like to think most a goners feel the same way?. but this too will change....