Are CD players dead

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Anonymoustao, well said.
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Homework means having adequate Music Selection first,
on the superior sounding Format, and having this prior to
getting rid of the old Format. It was never a question of
getting rid of CD due to SACD since there never was an
adequate Music Selection for SACD to replace CD. Ditto for High Rez. Downloads. 16/44.1 Downloads sound about the same as 16/44.1 CD so what are you left with? Whatever you are trying to replace CD with, you haven't got superior sounding Format together with adequate Music Selection. You have nothing, but smoke and mirrors! You plan to replace CD with an imaginary Format made up of Smoke, and Mirrors? I will pay for it with imaginary dollars-that acceptable?

You might not have a superior format in itself, but with the right setup, the digital files can and do sound better than the original disc. That is enough for me.

Shakey

There seems to me to be a bit of a luddite camp on this thread: while CD never managed to compete sonically with Vinyl, the same doesn't apply to digital, even in Redbook format through upsampled memory play. Hence I would encourage everybody to compare their CD players with a properly set up computer and new generation DAC. It' ll put paid to this thread without further ado. BTW, the best result on Vinyl is via digitizing through Purevinyl and I run a Dynavector DV 507, Zyx Universe + Artisan setup!

"Redbook format through upsampled memory play"??? We are
talking about REPLACING "Ripping" exclusively with
"Downloading". There will be no Ripping of Redbook Format
if there are no CD's. You call Downloading of MP3/i-Tunes
as Downloading Redbook? What Book are you reading? If CD
doesn't compete sonically, MP3/i-Tunes will? Lossless
compressed downloaded 16/44.1 CD material will sound better
than a non-compressed/non-processed 16/44.1 CD Disk? Isn't
it the same source for both, 16/44.1? So, how exactly does downloading/compressing them "1's" and "0's" improve S.Q.?