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Why CD players are not getting cheaper ?

Why on earth would CD players be getting any cheaper? You've been able to buy a CD player for C£50 for the last 15 years or so - how much cheaper do you think they should get? If you mean why aren't 5K CD players now costing £50 then you need to consider why they were priced at 5K in the first place!
 
I would like to know what sells more units:

Turntables over 3k
DACs over 3k
CD players over 3k

I'd guess the CD players would sell the least of the three, but I don't know shit. Maybe the high end CD player market is so small that the very high end units only trade amongst a finite number of users?

I feel like, other than cables, CD players suffer from more dramatic diminishing returns than most categories of hardware. If you're buying a CD player in the thousands, you're probably retired, have the last name Koch and you're more interested in a show piece than in sound quality.

I'm saying this as a jealous person who has never owned a CD player worth more than 2500 bucks.
 
Hi Guys:

For some of us Internet streaming is still a long way off and it’s just too much of a faff ripping and tagging all my CDs onto a hard-drive, I’ve done it once to AAC+ / high bit-rate format and I have no intention of putting myself through that again. Classical CD’s present a huge issue when tagging as the naming of movements and separate items within a larger piece of work is never consistent amongst the online music databases. This can create some real headaches for sorting and retrieving music from a server based music storage system.

I already have most of my music collection ripped to high bit-rate AAC+ format and living on a couple of 160g iPod Classics. These I can connect to and control through my ARCAM T32 tuner along with the ARCAM rDock. The T32 has a built in chipset that can communicate with an iPod making it behave like a music server. When it comes to Classical music, navigating through the tagged meta-data is quite painful when you have to consider the multitude of search criteria required for classical music. CD’s are just more convenient and I still like to hold physical media. I also like to read the liner notes.

If I need background music to fill the room with noise then there is always the iPod/rDock or the radio. Here in Australia DAB+ doesn’t sound too bad with a good selection the Classical, Jazz as well as contemporary popular music stations all offering a good stream of music with minimal announcer intrusion. The ARCAM T32 also does excellent work with good old FM radio and when a live to air broadcast is available the tuner really shines. For a serious sit down and experience the music session, then CD, LP or Live To Air broadcast over FM Radio is the only way to go in my world.

I still enjoy the concept of an album as a single coherent body of smaller works rather than just “cherry picking” a few tracks from a disc. Online streaming and radio just doesn’t treat music in that way so we only get to hear a few commercially marketable picks from an album and the rest of the music goes unheard.

Also there are still some very good CD players being manufactured at reasonable prices. Yamaha, Marantz, Rotel, Denon, and a few others are still making some very respectable CD spinners that actually sound quite good considering the asking price. The good thing is that these days CD is a very mature product and the technology is at a stage where good things can be done for very little coin. I have a budget Yamaha CD player in my Study/spare room that comes remarkably close to my more expensive ARCAM CD player in terms of sound quality.

Anyway: in my observation it’s not CD that streaming is displacing but rather radio. Most radio stations are also available as an Internet stream and a good deal more stations as streaming only. It’s a sad observation that my ARCAM T32 tuner was only available for a relatively short time before it was discontinued. This is rather unfortunate because I believe the T32 was ARCAM’s finest ever tuner on both FM and DAB (it’s FM tuner was based on an analogue section rather than a software defined FM tuner as is generally the case with most DAB/FM tuners). The T32’s s ability to connect with and operate an iPod via the rDock made it even more attractive. The T32 was probably killed off by Internet radio / streaming. It’s my observation that it’s tuners rather than CD players that are now being made in less numbers as people are moving to streaming services. Where a tuner is fitted to a music server / streaming device it’s generally a software defined digital tuner with very little regards to performance or overall sound quality.

CD still has a valid place in my listening regime and I suspect it will be that way for some time, and then there is always my “vinyls”. :)

LPSpinner.
 
Blzebub said:
Plus, the peeing around with computers is off-putting, and people with these systems tend to dot around from one thing to the next, never listening to an entire album, and sometimes not even listening to an entire track before switching to something else.
Click to expand...

Seems like Bub has met someone flighty with a clunky streaming solution and has concluded all streaming solutions and users are like this.

No, and streaming is very very simple. It has to be for wide scale adoption by people put off by Audiophiles.

I play entire LPs. Last night I played The entire Bach/Sitkovesky Goldberg Variations (Thomas Gould) follow by all of "Time Present and Time Past" by Mahan Esfahan (Arkiv) this is an incredible Album BTW, Baroque Harpsichord to Orchestral Suites to serialism and minimalist loop music -- an amazing release! Then all of Clementi & Beethoven Piano Sonatas (the new one by Allesandro Deljavan). I started on the Grieg Piano Concertos by Javier Perianes and stopped after track one as I was ready for bed. I'll pick it up where I left off today.

I have seen plenty of Vinyl and CD Audiophiles play one or two tracks from an LP. As for peeing around with computers, I don't use a single computer, just a Phone or a Tablet (which are computers, I suppose).

Generalisations are general, inferring from a sample of one is really the laziest form of stupid.
 
LPSpinner said:
Hi Guys:

For some of us Internet streaming is still a long way off and it’s just too much of a faff ripping and tagging all my CDs onto a hard-drive, I’ve done it once to AAC+ / high bit-rate format and I have no intention of putting myself through that again. Classical CD’s present a huge issue when tagging as the naming of movements and separate items within a larger piece of work is never consistent amongst the online music databases. This can create some real headaches for sorting and retrieving music from a server based music storage system.

I already have most of my music collection ripped to high bit-rate AAC+ format and living on a couple of 160g iPod Classics. These I can connect to and control through my ARCAM T32 tuner along with the ARCAM rDock. The T32 has a built in chipset that can communicate with an iPod making it behave like a music server. When it comes to Classical music, navigating through the tagged meta-data is quite painful when you have to consider the multitude of search criteria required for classical music. CD’s are just more convenient and I still like to hold physical media. I also like to read the liner notes.

If I need background music to fill the room with noise then there is always the iPod/rDock or the radio. Here in Australia DAB+ doesn’t sound too bad with a good selection the Classical, Jazz as well as contemporary popular music stations all offering a good stream of music with minimal announcer intrusion. The ARCAM T32 also does excellent work with good old FM radio and when a live to air broadcast is available the tuner really shines. For a serious sit down and experience the music session, then CD, LP or Live To Air broadcast over FM Radio is the only way to go in my world.

I still enjoy the concept of an album as a single coherent body of smaller works rather than just “cherry picking” a few tracks from a disc. Online streaming and radio just doesn’t treat music in that way so we only get to hear a few commercially marketable picks from an album and the rest of the music goes unheard.

Also there are still some very good CD players being manufactured at reasonable prices. Yamaha, Marantz, Rotel, Denon, and a few others are still making some very respectable CD spinners that actually sound quite good considering the asking price. The good thing is that these days CD is a very mature product and the technology is at a stage where good things can be done for very little coin. I have a budget Yamaha CD player in my Study/spare room that comes remarkably close to my more expensive ARCAM CD player in terms of sound quality.

Anyway: in my observation it’s not CD that streaming is displacing but rather radio. Most radio stations are also available as an Internet stream and a good deal more stations as streaming only. It’s a sad observation that my ARCAM T32 tuner was only available for a relatively short time before it was discontinued. This is rather unfortunate because I believe the T32 was ARCAM’s finest ever tuner on both FM and DAB (it’s FM tuner was based on an analogue section rather than a software defined FM tuner as is generally the case with most DAB/FM tuners). The T32’s s ability to connect with and operate an iPod via the rDock made it even more attractive. The T32 was probably killed off by Internet radio / streaming. It’s my observation that it’s tuners rather than CD players that are now being made in less numbers as people are moving to streaming services. Where a tuner is fitted to a music server / streaming device it’s generally a software defined digital tuner with very little regards to performance or overall sound quality.

CD still has a valid place in my listening regime and I suspect it will be that way for some time, and then there is always my “vinyls”. :)

LPSpinner.
Click to expand...

I agree completely, and thanks for putting it into words. And thank God there is still something one can do without going through a computer. For me this, too, is important.
 
I'm not at all convinced that CD sounds better than a computer and a dac. I expect players are holding their values because fewer companies are making quality CD players nowadays and because plenty of us older lot haven't switched to streaming or computer based audio. Plus many have substantial cd collections that they want to keep for exactly the same reasons that they hold onto vinyl.
 
We need one of those Frost Show sketches, where John Cleese says 'I look down on him, because he doesn't play LPs', Ronnie Barker says 'And I look down on him, because he doesn't play CDs', and Ronnie Corbett says 'I look up to both of them, because I don't own any physical media at all'.

(Of course the order could be changed or reversed according to one's own prejudices)
 
It is very easy to compare, use an optical transport and a computer as transport and connect them both to the same dac.
As long as the dac is properly designed there should be no difference in sound quality.
Keith.
 
JezmondTutu said:
I'm not at all convinced that CD sounds better than a computer and a dac. I expect players are holding their values because fewer companies are making quality CD players nowadays and because plenty of us older lot haven't switched to streaming or computer based audio. Plus many have substantial cd collections that they want to keep for exactly the same reasons that they hold onto vinyl.
Click to expand...

You are believing what you want to believe.

I'd like a streaming solution that sounded as good as or better than my CD transport, a £550 Rega Apollo R. I've heard a couple that do and they cost thousands. If I had thousands I'd be wanting to compare these streamers with CD transports at the same price point.

I like the convenience aspect. I'd like nothing more than being able to access my entire music collection without having to play hunt for the jewel case but I'm not going to sacrifice sound quality for it. I'm not bothered about owning the physical medium.

"Oh look what I can do.... this is so 21st Century and it sounds just as good!"

I haven't fallen for that one.
 
Purite Audio said:
It is very easy to compare, use an optical transport and a computer as transport and connect them both to the same dac.
As long as the dac is properly designed there should be no difference in sound quality.
Keith.
Click to expand...

I've done exactly that. There is no such thing as "a properly designed DAC" although, no doubt, you claim to sell them!
 
I'm not at all convinced that CD sounds better than a computer and a dac.
Click to expand...

CD players don't, even £15k ones were crap in comparison. Plus they restrict you to plastic discs. New music either isn't sold on CD or is available for download at other bitrates which are useless on CD players. CD is over, has been for yonks. The discs are OK for a £1 or 50p to rip and bin and that's it. Ask who wants to shift piles of unwanted CD players for more than £20 and why.
 
I have access to and use all the different music sources mentioned here

Overall I prefer the convenience of cd
 
Ultimately you believe what you choose to believe, but listening to the gigantic library on Tidal is hugely enjoyable.
Keith.
 
Joe Hutch said:
Does that include the DAC inside your own CDP?
Click to expand...

It does. I don't even use the DAC inside my CD player.

When Keith says "properly designed" he means "perfect."

Even if a DAC is "perfect" it isn't going to stop the noise from a computer entering the analogue domain.
 
abbydog said:
CD players don't, even £15k ones were crap in comparison. Plus they restrict you to plastic discs. New music either isn't sold on CD or is available for download at other bitrates which are useless on CD players. CD is over, has been for yonks. The discs are OK for a £1 or 50p to rip and bin and that's it. Ask who wants to shift piles of unwanted CD players for more than £20 and why.
Click to expand...

You seem to be avoiding the issue of sound quality. If I were you I'd continue doing just that. The truth will hurt.
 
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