Why are CD's decling in quality?

Lowrider57 ... I don't recall having ordered from Japanese vendors. Is there a web site?

To date, my source for hi-rez redbook CD is Acoustic Sounds, who ain't exactly cheap.

There are many Japanese vendors on Amazon selling mostly SHM-CD.
There is an online Japanese store that somebody here recommended but I never bookmarked it.
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Found it in the archives...XRCD, SHM-CD, Blu-spec CD

[url]http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/music/index.html[/url]

There is cdJapan:

http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/index.html

for the widest selection. They are in Japan and I've never ordered from them so I can't comment on their service, delivery time, etc.

To the op's question, I borrow cds from the library from time to time and unless I'm one of the first borrowers they are beat to crap but they usually still play just fine.

I found this a while ago and is why I thought more than 1 laser pickup is use now.

Multi-beam CD-ROM Drives
A new technological development, the multi-beam CD-ROM drive uses 7 laser beams instead of one to to produce 36X performance from a 6X rotation speed. Six beams are used for reading data; the other one is used for error correction. A new development by Hi-Val in multi-beam CD-ROM drives, the first 40X drive, utilize 7 laser beams, reading simultaneously. (6 that read, and one for error correction, the same as above). The yield is true 40X performance and a transfer rate that can reach 6MB/second. The CD-ROM disc rotates as smoothly as a 6X drive.

I maybe mistaken again but don't most HiEnd CD players use Computer ROM transports and not cheap consumer CD drives. Like Meridian at one time used Toshiba transports not an off the shelf cd drive for better performance and access time.