I think the point is being missed by a few on this thread, Digital is not dead at all.. So I am not sure who said that in this thread, As a matter of fact this thread is quite the opposite, Its advancing quite rapidly, it is, was, and will be the continuing standard in the industry with ZERO doubt.. That is the Exact reason to stay away from huge investment into an optical / transport playback device
CD's are still a good investment of the software itself because you will need to get the data from somewhere, but a Hi priced Optical drive will be pointless to play it back in real time, because you will copy your disc over once to your new Toy like a new easy and perfectly good sounding file retrieval system, and feed a dac without the mechanical transport needed anymore
This is where I think some guys are in denial or going to be really pissed one day when they are out buying CD's thinking "Damn, Now I go home and fire up the 7000 dollar transport, and knowingly I see all these new devices for about 1000 bucks I could put all my albums on feeding my dac and it sounds as good, at least as good, and is more conveinent, and I could still have my discs and throw them in the closet."
Again buy all the CD's you want, no problem, no loss, you will pay the artists or the companies providing you the info one way or the other and plastic discs to get this info into your home is again perfectly fine.. But I would not invest in a high priced optical reader of any sort, hell most of these machines will have a very good optical drive to transfer your data off the disc internally right there to your file system, and will not sound any better using a esoteric transport, I guarantee that day is coming and faster than most want or will admit too
