Linn Abandons CD Players

"I just wonder if this is the start of a huge shift."

More immediate and of impact to the high end player market than players in general I would think.

Sales of players as a whole have been in decline for a while already I believe. Most buy DVD or Blu Ray players that can also play CDs. Hook a good DVD or Blu Ray player up to a good stereo DAC properly and the results will likely be quite good. I do that in my second 2 channel A/V system currently ($300 marantz DVD player to mhdt Paradisea tube DAC). But frankly 95% of my digital playback time is logged via Roku Soundbridges feeding external DACs on both my systems, the Roku fed (via wireless D connection) from the same laptop PC used as a music server for both systems as needed.

I worry about how music will be delivered and stored.

Not Redbook music--the system today is fine for that. I can buy a CD used or new, or download a file. However a server, for Redbook recordings, only offers convenience. It doesn't offer a big step up in sound quality from the playback gear I have already; I know 'cause I've compared a few.

Vinyl still beats digital, too, so I have a turntable and I'm happy.

However there are a few high-res digital music files or discs around and I've listened to them on the music servers I've auditioned. Now this is more like it. I would be willing to make changes to hear more of this kind of quality.

The thing is, these files are huge. Downloading an hour of 24/96 takes three hours or more, and the resulting file is enormous. I will need at least three huge hard discs to store a music library of any size ( two backups, but that's not overkill ) and hours of time online to build it.

Archiving properly is another question--more hard discs every couple of years? Burning to Blu-ray?

None of this is ideal. Buying a physical disc is a lot more convenient.

"None of this is ideal. Buying a physical disc is a lot more convenient."

I agree. There is a lot of data to move around even with redbook CD format if you have a large collection, as many here do. Higher res sources are even worse.

Storage is cheaper than ever and network bandwidths continue to increase, however, I do not see the time to soon where physical storage media like CD/optical discs will become completely obsolete.

Given all this though, I am already highly skeptical of the value of high end CD players these days and I think the trend will be towards fewer and fewer of these. Of course, there will always be some high end, very expensive, boutique item CD players bandied around to those who still care. Just fewer and fewer down the road even in comparison to today.

The Redbook CD will be around for a long time to come. Obviously new formats such as digital downloading will carve their proper place in the market. Quality of downloaded music is improving as is the education by the public to its use. That said to many consumers both casual and audio orientated fans still have a desire for physical media and will not abandon said physical choices. Redbook CD after storming to huge success by the 90's will obviously see its market share dwindle. But it will hold a place in the market arena. The Vinyl LP was said to be dead some 10 years ago and today it has re-carved a popular and desirable place in the music market place. No it will never regain the sales numbers it had in the late 70's and early 80's but the LP record enjoys its new found place among music fans.

Digital downloading though convenient and now can be had for better audio quality has its warts too. Small library of choices as compared to the CD and the older analogue record and even cassette tape libraries create and sold over the years. It also has the worry of being lost or corrupted via a hard drive or flash drive failure. This will cause great troubles to those who only use it as their medium. What owning a physical medium offers to the user is the ability to keep control over the storage and safety of content as well as the ability to upload onto a server based system if they wish and even an ability to readily without much hassle back up copies they own be these CD,LP or even the audio cassette.

So no the physical medium we know as the CD will not be fading away anytime soon, but will have to accept its market share place to be reduced as other choices offer themselves to the consumer.

BTW, if you want a spare copy of downloaded audio files, you can always burn them to recordable CDs on most any computer so you have that as a spare (also convenient for playing in the car).