Why CD players will never be dead

"When I look at the shelves of CDs it allows me to browse in a different way than any computer graphics can give me. I'm the sort of listener that seldom knows what I want to hear until I browse.”

That’s very understandable Irv. Why not just leave your CDs displayed as they are; then you can browse any way you want.

I'll wait for on demand streaming downloads to mature into a viable option. No way, never in my lifetime will I rip 1000's of cds onto a hard drive. Till then I will continue to enjoy rotating cd players of different sonic merits. Modifying each to my satisfaction.

Mr. Tennis - The problem with comparing my USB DAC with your CD player is that everything is different, the interface and the DAC. My DAC even has a volume control, so it would replace your preamp. It's not fair really. It will make your CD player sound like a boombox. This is an award-winning front-end that got best of show from TAS for the last 2 years at RMAF.

A more fair comparison to see how computer audio compares to optical disc would be to compare your CD player as a transport to my USB converter as a transport, both driving the same good DAC with the same S/PDIF cable.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Reb - Here is what I think of on-line streaming music: It will probably be a rent as you go basis, just like streaming movies. It will also be limited in bandwith by using compressed lossy formats, so the quality will suffer. I dont want to pay each time I listen to a music track, particularly if it's not master tape quality.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

To Steve (Audioengr) or anyone else inclined to explain...How is it possible for a copy of a CD played from a computer hard drive to sound better than the original CD? I'm not trying to be argumentative. I would really like to understand what the improvement derives from. Is it the "ripping" (copying?) process that unlocks more info from the original CD? or is it the bit stream being read off the hard drive that is some how superior to what a conventional (or even mod'd.) CD player can produce? Is it the result of something else? I don't get it.