Rumors of CD Demise Exagerated? New Hegel

About 10 years ago I walked into a record store in San Francisco (it may have been Virgin but now gone) and asked why there were no CD's there.  The sales guy told me that CD's were dead and that all music was to be downloaded or streamed.   Since then I have purchased the Oppo 193, 203, 205, a Bryston CD-3, an Ayre 5-x (used) and most recently a Nagra CD payer (used) and a McIntosh MCD 350 SACD/CD player (used).  Jay's Audio, Pro-Ject and other more high end manufacturers  have come out with CD transports. I now by my CD's from Amazon, no problem.  I ain't worried.

....last time I bothered to 'look', 16" transcription tables & discs are Still available to the Real die-hards....and there will always be some kid, somewhere, that will mess about with a 'radio' using a crystal and a wire....

I'm pretty sure that we can all go happily into 'dirt-nap' mode with the reassurance that all formats and all means of accessing them will prevail among some antiquarians that will keep some form of candle burning....

Just Because.... ;)

There is a fundamental difference between CD and vinyl because you can't make a compact disc semiconductor laser in your garage.

The biggest threat to CD is the elimination of optical drives in computers.

Unfortunate, but hopefully there are enough people out there who want to play their discs to provide enough economies of scale for companies like Sanyo to continue to make laser assemblies.

Without getting into the issue of sonics of streaming vs. CD vs. analog, it is interesting to speculate on why different people are attracted to different media. 
  Streaming of course is the clear winner with 85% of the revenue.  Now members here care about sound, but most of the public is more interested in ease of use, portability, etc.  Streaming gained most of its popularity when it generally wasn’t capable of good sound.  It’s only been the last  decade or so when great sounding products emerged as alternative to mp3.  Streaming loses a lot of the accoutrement of physical media, namely album covers and liner notes.

  It’s been observed that most lp sales are to people who don’t have a worthy playback system (check out threads in the analog section).  People spend $40 on lps and play them—if they play them at all- on rigs that cost perhaps twice as much.  The relatively few serious analog users post in places like Agon but are the distinct minority of vocal consumers.  So why do (generally younger generations than the average member here) they buy?  Because of the accoutrements, the way a tone arm looks sinking into a black mass of vinyl, etc.  This generation came of age during the heyday of CD, and vinyl is like getting a classic 1950s automobile.

   I was in my late 20s when CDs started their ascendancy and I thought they were pretty cool.  Having the disc spin, being read by a laser, the dynamic range, longer playing times, lack of surface noise instantly won me over.  The downside was the accoutrement-there was still album covers and liner notes, but they were shrunken in size, and it just wasn’t the same.  I would nostalgically hang out in used lp stores years before I purchased a turntable.

  What about streaming and accoutrement?  Yeah, you can click a link and go to a site, but it’s not fun.  
  And this is why the younger, non audiophile generation has embraced lps, because they crave something that streaming isn’t giving them, and lps accoutrements are cooler than CD.

  Eventually some may realize that the sound of lps on their limited playback systems sucks.  And they  look for better analog replay, but decent analog requires some expense and labor.  Decent CD replay, however, can be had relatively cheaply.

  A lot of CD issues now stress the accoutrement-big boxes with cool repackaging and actual readable books, usually with lots of photos from concerts or studio shots.  People are buying them, if not in numbers like the heyday of CD, at least in enough quantity that the manufacturers realize there is still a market for CD replay 

I still buy phycial media (and very rarely a download), rip to my laptop. Real LISTENING (sit down and listen) always from CD/SACD, but use the laptop to 'stream' when just listening with one ear/background/casual. I have started to re buy vinyl for nostalgic reasons, but really don't use it, just as I sold all my vinyl when I was able to afford my first front loader CD player. I like the convenience of my 'streamer', and CAN see that I will be listening to harddrive stored media exclusively (and replace buying physical CD/SACD with buying the files), but not 'over the air' streaming (for the foreseeable future).