who needs a cd player anymore

One thing that downloaders only will in time miss? That is a real, tangible piece of property to own and value. Yes, you may be able to pull up a play list on an lcd screen but you invariably have nothing real, just virtual details on a screen locked inside some hard drive. People will over time miss not having something real. Today many don't care because the download ideology is just the thing to fill up a hard drives with music track/titles. FINE! enjoy, but you will likely find in time that you are going to miss something, more desirable for humans, something human consumers like, PRIDE OF OWNERSHIP, physical property to value and even display and talk about and share with family and friends as they may view your CD's, LP's or tape collection. Looking up a play list on a lcd screen just isn't the same.

Next since many download only tracks and not complete albums they miss out on the meaning of the artists' albums which often are a snapshot of the artist or group in time. Imagine say only downloading "Money" and "Us and Them" off Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon. Imagine what the listener will miss by not having the whole album to listen to. Yes, one can and some do download whole albums but not as many as those who pick and choose only certain tracks.

If all your music is only on a hard drive and it fails you are left with a lot of mess to try to recreate the library you had on it. On top of that the time you needed to download anyways. Well if such effort floats your boat.

But trust me the CD, like the LP or tapes before will not fade way, too many people want a real product and too many will not be bothered to waste time just uploading and downloading music tracks.

I will always support the CD. iPods and the like are crap...

To say Ipoda and the like are all crap shows you dont really know what can be done with this technology, it can be and often is fantastic, new download technology can even surpase what the redbook cd can do. Its more about the fact many dont want a "virtual" collection...........it has little to do with actual quality of reproduction.
If I were to do a server, it would sound great and I know for a fact it can be killer but I would loose the physical connection with music and I fear I would start to sample and cherry pick tunes instead of listening and discovering new music. Yes call it what ever you want but I and others proudly show our collection of music, to loose that doesnt seem like something I am ready to do.

I never said anything about my cd collection which is around 5k i have been importing that via wav and apple lossless.

I gotta tell ya, I have no interest in devoting that amount of time to the process. Seriously, that's like a part time job. I'm a realist and understand the industry is heading toward hard drive based music, but the original question is "who needs a CD player" and if my options are to listen to CD's or devote months of my life getting my collection onto a hard drive, then I'll take the CDP by a long shot.

I have a krell kid ipod player it sounds fantastic. I think krell is the only company hi-end to make such a player. I hope in the near future other hi end companies come out with ipod players. I have sent my krell kid to the mad modder Mr. schultze at the upgrade company to let him work his magic on it, can't wait to get it back and see how it compares to my ml 390s cd player.