Linn to stop making CD players from January 2010

[laurie]

This is an interesting development. 2009 has seen a sharp rise in streaming audio downloaded from the internet and websites. Hi-Fi World magazine have been predicting the demise of the CD player throughout this year. Now Linn are the first big name to make that step.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8368895.stm

I wonder if any other famous brands will follow over the next few months?

[4313B]

Hi-Fi World magazine have been predicting the demise of the CD player throughout this year.The sooner the better and good riddance! :applaud:

Dump all the flavors of DVD players in the trash too. :yes:

[Mr. Widget]

The sooner the better and good riddance! :applaud:

Dump all the flavors of DVD players in the trash too. :yes:Serious or sarcasm?

I think NAS (network accessible storage) drives may be preferable to piles of CDs or DVDs, but you still need to get the data from there to here.. and streaming has it's drawbacks. I was streaming a Netflix film the other night and one end or the other or somewhere in between hiccuped... my player locked up and after the five minutes to reboot and relocate the spot in the movie where the error occurred... I was pretty annoyed.

Currently Vudu is one of the better video streaming sources, but who knows if they will stick around. As for music... I want to own my copies and at the highest data quality possible... most downloads come up short both for ownership and for quality. Will we eventually get there? Most likely.

Do I think Linn is wrong, no. How can they possibly compete for the dwindling market that is out there? There are piles of good to great CD players out there... a small company like Linn doesn't need to waste their resources in a market like that.


Widget

[Allanvh5150]

I hear ya Widget. I have had many a download like that. My prefered method is to go to the store and purchase the original. :)

[SEAWOLF97]

Digital music commonly is stored either on flash memory (not a very hi capacity) or hard drive.

one of hard drives basic ratings is MTBF (mean time between failures)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_time_between_failures

this number is not always a great predictor of life , but the basic question is not "will my hard drive ever die" ???

BUT "when will my hard drive die " ? They ALL will die at some point.

sure , you can back it up to another drive or even computer tape (which has only a fair successful retrieval rate) OR you can back it up to hardcopy (the mantra of IT)

So why not just buy the original media, rip it the way you want it and store the media ??

the person putting a lot of money into digital downloads without a plan is heading for disaster.

[Mr. Widget]

So why not just buy the original media, rip it the way you want it and store the media ??We always recommend that our customers keep their original CDs "just in case" and since drive prices have dropped we now always recommend that they only use mirrored drives (RAID 1).

Widget

[laurie]

Digital music commonly is stored either on flash memory (not a very hi capacity) or hard drive.

one of hard drives basic ratings is MTBF (mean time between failures)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_time_between_failures

this number is not always a great predictor of life , but the basic question is not "will my hard drive ever die" ???

BUT "when will my hard drive die " ? They ALL will die at some point.

sure , you can back it up to another drive or even computer tape (which has only a fair successful retrieval rate) OR you can back it up to hardcopy (the mantra of IT)

So why not just buy the original media, rip it the way you want it and store the media ??

the person putting a lot of money into digital downloads without a plan is heading for disaster.

Thats something everyone should consider. I was thinking of this myself earlier today.

[laurie]

I owned a Linn Karik 111 between 2000 and 2005. It is (was) an excellent CD player which made every CD played on it sound real good.

In 2005 I sold it privately for £400 after advertising it in the Loot (Loot is a paper where you can advertise anything including properties, its been around for decades - I understand Craig's list performs a similar function on the web) I got a much better deal for it than if I tried to sell it in a HiFi shop.

In 2006 I decided to get a Home Theatre PC built to my specs, a friend of mine who builds PCs did it with two DVD rewritable drives plus other things I wanted.

I have never looked back. I play all my CDs through it using Windows Media player and burn CDs onto my hard drive using lossless to do it. Plus I get all the benefits of album art, biographies, artist profile etc. Home Theatre PCs are designed specially for these types of functions so there is no noise on playback. I also have Nero showtime to watch movies etc.

My Home Theatre PC plays CDs better than my Karik 111 did, my brother also agrees, he works in a specialist HiFi shop and owns a Linn CD player himself. I think whats most impressive about high definition audio is the absolute openess to the sound and how seamless it is, the sound is never constricted at all regardless of what CD I play. It really brings out the best in my JBLs :) Good quality internet stations like http://music.aol.com/radioguide/jazz-radio also sound fantastic.

I decided back in 2006 that I will never buy another CD player. I still continue to buy CDs and usually burns CDs onto my hard drive when I borrow CDs from the Library or from friends.

[Bladerunner]

Flac file and DS is the only way now we have the new Wolfson Dac's and 125db S/N !!

In real terms the greatest step forward in HIFI since the CD came about .

I have the New Linn DS player and it has made my CD collection redundant over night !! Just get ready to get a huge memory on your PC .

Go listen guys its stunning !!!

FLAC files contain several times the amount of information and its stunning in 24bit 196khz FLAC FORMAT .

http://www.linnrecords.com/recording-Lyn-s-Une-Alyn-Cosker-drums-jazz.aspx

Now we can here full post production sound !!

[jcrobso]

If they could have held off for 5 more years we would have had better CDs.
The 44.1 sampling rate is just a little to low, 54k would have been better! Most of us know there are much better formats than the MP3

I remember the CES show where Phillips was demonstrating the new digital CD format, WOW great sound. The next year everyone had a CD player! I was going around asking the street price and all said about $1000. I told most that if you ever want to sell any you need to the price blow $400 and even lower.
I also remember when Magnavox introduced the Laser Disk, that was an exciting show. My wife won a LD player at a music store a year later!
As new technology comes along the old goes away, but not completely, vinyl records are still made. I just love the people that make the wild predictions, very few changes happen over night.
I remember the late 1950's when the Wankel car engine came out, "It is the engine of the future! It will replace the piston engine!" Anyone out there with a Wankel engine?
I prefer to buy the CD then rip it for my MP3 player.
I know people that have there complete music collection on iTunes, if their iPod crashes at the same times as the PC/Mac they will lose all of their music collection! They will have to start from scratch.:blink:

[Bladerunner]

My Father was the CEO/Owner/Design Engineer of Transcriptors Turntables and I can remember his trip to see Philips about the Cd player. From that stand point and the fact I have had many RX7's and still race against them ! NSU ! My Dad had one !! Showing my age again ! The fact about the rotarys is like many other inventions ,reworked with todays glue's composites materials the whole episode would have a different out come !

The Ds thing for me came about after I required a new CD transport ,I contacted a local Hifi reseller to see what was out there ,I got invited to hear the new Linn DS player on its first trade play.

The moment I heard a full FLAC 24bit 196khz recording vs sacd I was absolutely speechless !! Now I have a very good Gill DAC and a Micromega top loading CD player so its all pretty good stuff .

Go listen ! I promise you you will be running to get a player !

Thats a Promise . CD is dead for Hi end audio .

Of course then there is vinyl! :)

David

[Mr. Widget]

I know people that have there complete music collection on iTunes, if their iPod crashes at the same times as the PC/Mac they will lose all of their music collection! They will have to start from scratch.:blink:A friend of mine is a record collector with thousands of titles and many rare copies worth hundreds and some even more valuable... in 1991 there was a massive fire in the Oakland hills near his home. Over 3,000 homes were totally lost. He was lucky.

Regardless of your format, with proper precautions loss can be mitigated.


Widget

[Bladerunner]

I agree . With anything PC you have to run mirror drives or do backups without fail . If you don't then life is kinda hard when your hard drive decides it wants to go to PC heaven .

We have very bad floods here just now so its the same kind of situation for some I guess.

best regards

David :)



A friend of mine is a record collector with thousands of titles and many rare copies worth hundreds and some even more valuable... in 1991 there was a massive fire in the Oakland hills near his home. Over 3,000 homes were totally lost. He was lucky.

Regardless of your format, with proper precautions loss can be mitigated.


Widget

[robertbartsch]

I don't download music from MP3 files since they use compression and transferring the files from place-to-place is difficult.

On videos, I have a blue ray that donwloads from the Net but the picture and sound quality is not the best.

I guess this will improve with time but, for now, my music is on CDs.

I'm I missing something?

[Bladerunner]

Studio Master FLAC



If absolute sound quality is what you want then this file is best for you.
FLAC files are lossless at various high bit rates, for example, 44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz and 192kHz (check each title for actual details). The quality is identical to that of an SACD (Stereo only). The format will be dependent on the actual recording method we used originally. No DSD files are offered as it is not possible to play them back on a PC so an equivalent PCM format is offered. These files offer true "studio quality" and are what was used by Linn to produce the production version of our CD releases. Be sure to check compatibility with your computer sound card etc before you download a file and note that large amounts of storage space are required for each track.
FLAC files can be imported into many media players, such as the Linn DS digital stream player, but unfortunately Microsoft does not yet support high bit-rate FLAC, so these files will not play in Windows Media Player. There are many other FLAC players available such as Media Monkey and Foobar.
FLAC Studio Masters play in Play and VLC, but not in Cog or MPlayer. It is however very easy to transcode FLAC to several other lossless formats.
Mac Users can convert FLAC files using MAX http://sbooth.org/Max/ (http://sbooth.org/Max/).
For further information about FLAC please visit the FLAC website (http://flac.sourceforge.net/).


taken from the Linn website .

David.

[Ducatista47]

Winamp and other good quality stand alone music playing software offer native support for FLAC, Wavpack and Ape files. Some versions need a free, tiny piece of software to do it. I personally find Windows Media Player to be an inconvenient music player; it is certainly not a specialist at music.

I do not think Sony/Phillips - the developers - will ever enable DSD playback. SACD was designed as an anti piracy system, and Sony will not authorize a digital out for even the dumbed down files on the disc you buy. A pity, as the DSD files may be huge but they probably rival analogue master tapes in information and naturalness.

Clark