Is this the END of DAYS for the high end CD player

If it is not, it is about to go thru a huge change. It's going to be a while yet, but universal disc players and high res disc players 'IF' disc players do prevail, will be the norm soon enough.... IMHO.

Mainstream music playback in the digital domain is definitely headed for the Hard drive based outfit.

Blame the iPod boys and girls. or Steve Jobs.

Staying out of the server based music game because changes come so frequently, is the poorest of excuses, though I've used it myself. The problem with it is this... if one truly believes such is the case in truth... they'll never get into the game itself, for it's not stopping anytime soon.

Ya just gotta jump in! Somewhere! Waiting for the digital dust to settle is like uh, waiting for Hell itself to freeze over so you can plan a ski trip!

Playstation, X box, receivers, DVD players, etc., have all been setting us up to learn menus and now personal confusers are showing us just how easy it is to acquire, facilitate, manage, and use remarkably large libraries at our fingertips! Boot up... download... press play! Done.

our music gets stored, labled, and cataloged in mere moments. the quality too is now just as fascinating and appealing and alluring.

So why not have a library of nearly 3000 Cds you can put in your coat pocket? Or 10,000 that you can hold in one hand?

Why not for $4K or less? And why not if the sound quality surpasses that of $5 to $6K CD players easily?

Grannyring

I understand. I run into people all the time who do use that "I'm waiting for..." and apparently have no real interest in even testing the PC music waters. Maybe ever.

...and I was the same way waiting until almost 2001 to get my first pc, and '05 or so before I began trying to have it outperform my Sony SCD xa777 CDP + DAC setup.

It took a while but I did it IMHO.

There are learning curves, and always will be... software folks aren't happy unless they can rearrange and re-lable things all the time. Look at MS Office 2007 vs 2003 if you don't believe me.

it/they are playing the shell game... hiding this, moving that. Even in media players things change. sometimes a lot. Well lately anyhow. Mostly for networking or zone specific playback, and for new hardware.

I've found no matter how much simpler things tend to get, there is always a learning curve. Especially if you've not been in the mix already and paying attention to the changes.

I'm about to upgrade to Win 7 in the next mo or so... No matter muy previous exp with Windows... XP & Vista... 7 is going to have it's own quirks, identity, and ways of doing things unlike it's ancestors... so I'll have to relearn and learn a new OS.

It's always going to be that way... until they make a personal confuser that takes the confusing part out of the equation... one that operates on mental commands. Brain waves. Even then, there'll be some obstacles to overcome, items to learn about etc.

Human beings are always going to complicate the simplest of things when ever and where ever possible... if they think it'll make them money.

None of us here are going to live long enough to see computers that mesh with mind commands or work instinctively and intuitifvely for us.

complicated stuff becomes simple stuff when you figure out the complications. When you do you'll be surprised to find out just how uncomplicated things were to begin with.

Happiness has an element of comfort deep within itself. Whatever one is comfortable with at any given time, allows happiness to be close at hand instead of distant.