who needs a cd player anymore

I have a krell kid ipod player it sounds fantastic. I think krell is the only company hi-end to make such a player. I hope in the near future other hi end companies come out with ipod players. I have sent my krell kid to the mad modder Mr. schultze at the upgrade company to let him work his magic on it, can't wait to get it back and see how it compares to my ml 390s cd player.

.
Les_creative_edge......owning a piece of music software means nothing to me. I own LP's because that's all there was when I got involved in this hobby in the '70's. I own a reel-to-reel also. When cd's came along, I pretty much stopped buying and playing lp's and open reel tapes. I still keep my turntable, LP's and open reel deck pretty much for nostalgia and because I refuse to give up my vinyl. But, cd's is pretty much where it's at for me now for serious listening. When I got my SqueezeBox, all I could think of was 'how can they improve this thing so that I can get rid of the cd player and thousands of cd's?' Owning a cd or LP has no intrinsic value to me. To me, it's having access to high resolution music, no matter what the format is. If I can look at the artwork and liner notes of an LP online and get kickass sound from a hard drive based system, I'll take it every day. The space and cost of keeping thousands of LP's and cd's gets unwieldy at a certain point. If all of this music and artwork can be kept on a hard drive and played back with great sound, I'm all for it. I'm looking for a 21st century playback medium. I don't get misty-eyed looking at an LP that I've owned nearly 40 years. I get misty-eyed when I hear the music. For me it's the music itself, not the packaging that it came in. I don't need to hold the cd or the LP, I just want to hear it! This whole hobby started because we are trying to recreate the live event. Well, when you go to a live event, you don't get to own anything...all you get to do is to listen to it. The cd is nearing 30 years of age and the LP is over 60 years old. As humans, we don't like change, but it is inevitable. Time and technology marches relentlessly on. I love my cd player and my turntables and LP's, but as soon as I can configure a monster high-fidelity hard drive based system, I'm going to give up cd's and vinyl and never look back.

I own several very beautiful watches that I once adored when I purchased them years ago. I don't wear a watch anymore because it is redundant....I carry a cellphone everywhere and it has a clock built in....so, I don't need a watch...technology killed it. Patek Philippe and Rolex make great finely crafted timepieces. My cellphone is more accurate and it automatically adjusts itself for daylight savings time and when it crosses time zones. In reality those great watches are outdone by technology costing hundred of times less.

So, please someone in this forum help me put together a killer hard-drive based system so that I can shake loose of the 20th century and its old technology.

I'm looking to the future.
.

Glad you're happy! When Chesky, Sheffield Labs, Mobile Fidelity, Telarc, Audioquest, or some of the other quality recording/engineering studios offer their wares as no-loss downloads, I'll consider defecting from vinyl, RTR and CD.

Mitch4t,
I could not agree with you more. It is the music first and foremost.
Space is a valuable commodity here at my home, if I could only free myself of this incessant need to hold on to my albums. My system is now iPod based and I really have no need for them but I will carry this burden probably till I die.
One more thing, there is nothing like the feeling a true quality watch brings to it's owner. I feel more civilized when I'm wearing one, not less. My co-workers used to remind me that their $9.00 watch keep the same time as my Tag, I knew then what I still know now, it did not...

How about LPs and turntables?
CD advocates said 20 years ago that LPs would be obsolete. Now, ipod advocates are saying that CDs would be obsolete.

Two points raised:

1. The real advantage is not having to search though hundreds of cd and wasting time on finding songs.
2. you can enjoy so much more music and thats what its really about.

Usarmyvet91, do you listen to 50~70's jazz and classical music? Many of them are still not released in CDs. Even if they were, the sound quality would be inferior to original LPs. Same goes for mp3 (or encrypted) files.

I guess this is another issue of convenience (and marketing) vs truthfulness, and quantity vs quality of music. They don't need to work against each other and may very well go together, but at least as of now, those enjoy CDs (even LPs, like myself) may not care too much about such convenience and abundance. The way they have listened to music is just fine for them.

You may know very well of how to convert/download/organize music files in a hard drive, but it may not be so easy for many audiophiles, nor may they care, so convenience sometimes does not sell well either.

Here, many people spend several hundreds (or thousands) of dollars for cartridges and cables, several thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars for turntables, speakers, amps and sources, to enjoy sheer beauty of music. Even $20~40 for a new LP.
Now you are telling them how nice is your $400 Wadia transport and your music server of encrypted files, and their love to CDs (or even to LPs) will obsolete soon and be replaced by encrypted music files.
I would be surprised if you get much support here.

When I was in college (25 years ago), a professor in one of my class said that most music would be stored in silicon chips in the near future. Yes, he was right. But I don't remember he said that other music media would be obsolete.