CD players = dead?

tostadosunidos
geoffkait, do you mean that new music on CD is more compressed than before or that new releases of old music (say, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s) is more compressed than previous CD releases?

Here’s the deal. The industry began overly compressing (reduced dynamic range) CDs about 20 years ago for whatever reason. All CDs are a little compressed, everything is relative. But as time went on more and more CDs were being overly compressed, especially remastered CDs, as well as new issues of CD such as Stones and Dylan and Radiohead and many others. Also new releases of LPs are often but not always overly compressed, as well as some but not all SACDs and Blu Ray and hi res downloads. You can look into these statement at the Official Dynamic Range Database which now has something like 100,000 entries. Check it out!

http://dr.loudness-war.info

Just want to put my 2cts in. A year ago i sold my cd player, a Linn Unidisk SC. I had the chance to go all digital. I am familiar with DBpoweramp and tag&rename. Works like a charm. But i bought a new CDP instead. Got a great deal, and was sad to let my cd collection go on the 2nd hand market.

In the same year I had Roon for a month to try out. It is great in every way, as we all know. Software interface and music exploration is the bomb. BUT.... i mis the feeling of listening with concentration. With Roon i skip/swipe/search as a madman (and listen). With a cd i’m more in the music. And listen front to back with patience. Also the (bargain)hunt for a new cd is for me thrilling. I compare the whole cd experience with reading a news paper on Saturday morning. Or reading a good book. You can do it digital, but the real deal gives you something extra.

I hope i can get a Roon server up and running this year. Because in 2017 you can have your cake and eat it, and that’s the beauty ;) Also i'm gonna save for a high end cdp 2 maybe 3 yrs. I can wait. 

It does not matter if it's CD, streamer, blu-ray, sacd, tape, or vinyl, same rule applies to all: garbage in garbage out.  It's all in the mastering.  Most sound engineers now mix recordings so that they sound loud at low volumes.  The reason why hi-res files sound better, or there's a return to vinyl, it's in part because the original recordings are remastered more carefully to sound good with a higher dynamic range rather than mix everything to the limits within 2 or 3db dynamic range.  Just take recordings downsampled in mp3 and their remastered version for mp3... world of difference.....
Anyway, as long as we  don't burn cds, players will be around...

In this days you have pure CD transports that can be connected to an external DAC with amazing results now you don't have to be depend on the internal dac built in the CDP (usually not great ones ) and you can choose any dac you want based on your personal taste ,I bought mine cambrdige Audio CD transport a year ago connected it to my Macintosh pre/dac with astonishing results ,I don't have any desire to move on to a streamer.

That loudness war compilation of good and bad dynamic range does not square with many of the CDs I feel sound very good in my system.  Don't let it throw you off something you want--have to listen to it.