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Linn Abandons CD Players

What does everybody think?

On November 19, manufacturer Linn Products held a press conference in London to announce that they are ceasing the production of CD players.

They have maintained their focus on server based system controllers. With the improved data streaming and the ever changing format of digital technology, doesn't this sound like once again Ivor Tiefenbrun is leading the way when the common wisdom is not quite there yet?

Remember back to the late seventies, Ivor was there doing demos when many, many an audiophile was of the belief that the turntable had little or nothing to do with the sonic quality.

Do you feel we're their (yet)? Or that the rest of the industry (aside from our Scottish friends) is seeing this as a paradigm shift, dropping the red book CD?

Happy Listening!
128x128r_f_sayles

Showing 6 responses by mapman

mapman's avatar
mapman
21,830 posts
 
Makes sense. The market for high priced CD players is very small these days. Music servers and controllers and DACs are a much better investment.
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,830 posts
 
CD packaging was a disaster for the consumer from the beginning and has only gotten slightly better over the years. Too small, hard to remove seals when new, jewel boxes crack and break, etc. I will not miss CD packaging for the most part. 33 1/3 vinyl is the medium that got the packaging most right.

Whatever physical mediums survive or come about, I hope they decide to just package them in larger 331/3 like album covers for those willing to pay a premium for packaging. That is my hope.

The problem for vendors like Linn regarding players is that it is becoming almost impossible to justify the expense of high end CD players when music ripped to a hard drive and played back via server, controller, and DAC provides all the sonic benefits that most anybody could require.
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,830 posts
 
I pretty much always rip a CD to hard disk for playback now rather than pop it into the CD player.

It is still beneficial to have CD hardcopies of material even if ripped to disk. A disk restore from backup is faster in event of a disaster, but restore from CD is always a possibility, albeit slower.

Music Servers may still have a way to go from an ease of use perspective though. Its still easier to just pop a CD in to a player, but the sound quality and ease of access to material a server provides (once ripped there) is the best option today IMHO.
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,830 posts
 
"I just wonder if this is the start of a huge shift."

More immediate and of impact to the high end player market than players in general I would think.

Sales of players as a whole have been in decline for a while already I believe. Most buy DVD or Blu Ray players that can also play CDs. Hook a good DVD or Blu Ray player up to a good stereo DAC properly and the results will likely be quite good. I do that in my second 2 channel A/V system currently ($300 marantz DVD player to mhdt Paradisea tube DAC). But frankly 95% of my digital playback time is logged via Roku Soundbridges feeding external DACs on both my systems, the Roku fed (via wireless D connection) from the same laptop PC used as a music server for both systems as needed.
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,830 posts
 
"None of this is ideal. Buying a physical disc is a lot more convenient."

I agree. There is a lot of data to move around even with redbook CD format if you have a large collection, as many here do. Higher res sources are even worse.

Storage is cheaper than ever and network bandwidths continue to increase, however, I do not see the time to soon where physical storage media like CD/optical discs will become completely obsolete.

Given all this though, I am already highly skeptical of the value of high end CD players these days and I think the trend will be towards fewer and fewer of these. Of course, there will always be some high end, very expensive, boutique item CD players bandied around to those who still care. Just fewer and fewer down the road even in comparison to today.
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,830 posts
 
BTW, if you want a spare copy of downloaded audio files, you can always burn them to recordable CDs on most any computer so you have that as a spare (also convenient for playing in the car).
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