The CD player is dead. So says Linn Products, the high-end audio specialist based in Glasgow which for 20 years has been making .. CD players.
The reason: its audiophile customers have moved, with alacrity, to hard drive-based systems – its DS “streaming players” – that allow them to encode their entire CD collection in order to play any track at will.
“We introduced our streaming players two years ago, and thought they would be slow to take off,” says Gilad Tiefenbrun, Linn’s managing director who is the son of the original founder, Ivan. “But sales of CD players have declined 40% year-on-year, while streaming players now make up 30% of our total business. It’s unprecedented growth.” The growth in those sales has come while overall revenues have remained stable, he added.
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source: guardina.co.uk
CDs are not dead! You can get real bargains on great one box cd players. Quality never dies. CDs matched with SET and good speakers will be around for a long time!
Enjoyed LP’s then CD’s and now enjoy the flac files copied with EAC on my NAS through a Logitech squeezebox and highend outboard DA but when things changed nothing ever made me want to throw out my albums or CD’s. I use them for the car, loaning to others and retaining as backup. Ivor (not Ivan) at Linn is famous for getting peoples attention by poking them in the eye but CD mediia will be here for some time to come. MP3 is good but not best by any stretch of the imagination.
I record alot of spoken word radio both directly onto audio cd and on a computer then written to cdr. Both give great results at very little cost. And they sound great through my hi fi so I think cds will be arouncd for some time yet.
You must be kidding if you think CD’s are ‘dead’! Yes, sales are down due to various reasons, but sound quality-wise, you still can’t beat HDCD or SACD (or of course, vinyl)! And yes, i’ve heard ‘lossless’, but it’s not the same. There is NOTHING like being able to physically handle the medium, and look at artwork. Just like with vinyl. BTW, I am also a fan of hard drives, MP3, and the like.
Once upon the time Linn Sondek turntable (and Nain amplifier) was the best thing in the world, nowadays CD player is on the run in decay, so, LP rides again? Rule Britania!
I am a fan of the Hard Disc based archive systems starting to come to the market. But. My first choice will all ways be the PC or the MAC computer to do this task and to keep the physical CD media on hand in my physical collection. I will never buy a device for this task from LINN or NAIM or any other until I have the user option to remove and swap/upgrade the internal Hard Drive my self with no having to send it back to the manufacture, And to have full access to the files to use out side of the device on my PC or in another device remotely from the product.
I do not want any compression. Hard drives are large enough now to use full sized WAV files that are universal and can now fit many hundreds of CDs on one large drive.
Some of us all ready have our CD collections ripped on our PCs in full quality WAV files. How about letting us import the files into the device so we don’t have to rip them all again?
Ross, UK