who needs a cd player anymore

Mitch4t,
I could not agree with you more. It is the music first and foremost.
Space is a valuable commodity here at my home, if I could only free myself of this incessant need to hold on to my albums. My system is now iPod based and I really have no need for them but I will carry this burden probably till I die.
One more thing, there is nothing like the feeling a true quality watch brings to it's owner. I feel more civilized when I'm wearing one, not less. My co-workers used to remind me that their $9.00 watch keep the same time as my Tag, I knew then what I still know now, it did not...

How about LPs and turntables?
CD advocates said 20 years ago that LPs would be obsolete. Now, ipod advocates are saying that CDs would be obsolete.

Two points raised:

1. The real advantage is not having to search though hundreds of cd and wasting time on finding songs.
2. you can enjoy so much more music and thats what its really about.

Usarmyvet91, do you listen to 50~70's jazz and classical music? Many of them are still not released in CDs. Even if they were, the sound quality would be inferior to original LPs. Same goes for mp3 (or encrypted) files.

I guess this is another issue of convenience (and marketing) vs truthfulness, and quantity vs quality of music. They don't need to work against each other and may very well go together, but at least as of now, those enjoy CDs (even LPs, like myself) may not care too much about such convenience and abundance. The way they have listened to music is just fine for them.

You may know very well of how to convert/download/organize music files in a hard drive, but it may not be so easy for many audiophiles, nor may they care, so convenience sometimes does not sell well either.

Here, many people spend several hundreds (or thousands) of dollars for cartridges and cables, several thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars for turntables, speakers, amps and sources, to enjoy sheer beauty of music. Even $20~40 for a new LP.
Now you are telling them how nice is your $400 Wadia transport and your music server of encrypted files, and their love to CDs (or even to LPs) will obsolete soon and be replaced by encrypted music files.
I would be surprised if you get much support here.

When I was in college (25 years ago), a professor in one of my class said that most music would be stored in silicon chips in the near future. Yes, he was right. But I don't remember he said that other music media would be obsolete.

I am a fan of both styles of music delivery. One thing that I love about my music server is the ability to do things like enter "Tony Williams" into a search field and have every album he drums on pop right up. Or type "ECM Records" and there they are. I certainly don't think one side is better than the other but come on...most have to see at least some advantages in either camp.

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Synthfreek....I'm a fan of both style of deliveray also, but cd players and turntables upwards of $5k??, ....enough already.

As computers and cell phones got better, they got less expensive. Top end CD and analog keeps getting more expensive.

I'm looking for a way out.

Hard drive based is looking more and more like a viable alernative.
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Mith4t nice set up, really like the room. Take the wadia i170 yes its only a few hundred dollars but it can compete with cd transports that cost thousands you can ask anyone who has the wadia i170. audiogon member nrostrov is sending his wadia i170 to asi to get mods done on it a new clock, power supply etc. asi claims that it modded wadia can match or better the sound of some of the best cd transports from cec to esoteic don't know if this is true however when audiogoner nrostrov gets his back from being modded he will post his findings should be interesting. Remember the wadia i170 is really one of the first high end product to cater to the ipod, its still in its early stages. Their will be better and more expensive ipod transports/players in the near future that will really give the cd transport/player a run for its money. When apple comes out with true hd downloads watch out that little ipod will be pretty sweat.