2nd hand sales

[Richard Dunn]

I think the future is that the cd player is now finished, as you say bottleneck, but as with the tape deck a lot of people still have them and so will continue to service the majority.

I see 3 camps.

In the middle the cd player still servicing the majority of people but not necessarily audiophiles.

On one side of the cd player I see the vinyl camp, from the past, with an increasingly move towards vintage gear and on the other side, the future which is the streaming brigade.

The future pattern is already set for audiophiles. Vinyl will make a comback with audiophile records produced in small numbers at excessive prices. CD will die. Computer audio will take over from it - the software holders will will see an opportunity to sell the master quality downloads they already hold for silly prices. Which ever way quality music will never be cheap. The semi free downloads will go down in quality.

In fact this could be the salvation of the industry as it will make the master file holders talk up quality as a selling feature, but we have to get this coming recession out the way first.

 

[RobHolt]

It will be interesting to take stock in say 20 years.

CD players both old and new are now dirt cheap on the used market (excluding the very high end stuff). So I wonder if in 20 or so years these old machines will become sought after in the way that vintage TTs - and I include gear such as the LP12, Pinks etc in that category - are today and at high prices.

Or CD could go the way of the 8-Track and fade almost completely, or cassette which is very much becoming a vintage curiosity these days.

Unlike with vinyl, people with large CD collections can either convert them simply to file format for playback on a variety of systems, or replace them quickly with a download.

 

[Noel Winters]

I am in the Vinyl Camp Why because it is the only place i can hear the music i love
I have collected a fair size bank of music over the last 50 years and have a good
system for playback .but that is me i would not expect a younger member to race out and buy aT/T. They have their music and their likes thats what makes the T/T go round
Noel W.

 

[Cable Monkey]

It will be interesting to take stock in say 20 years.

CD players both old and new are now dirt cheap on the used market (excluding the very high end stuff). So I wonder if in 20 or so years these old machines will become sought after in the way that vintage TTs - and I include gear such as the LP12, Pinks etc in that category - are today and at high prices.

There may be a very few 'legendary' decks that will remain sought after, but vinyl has stuck because the only way to listen to it is on a record player. There are many ways to listen to CD without having a dedicated red book player and players that fit into a pocket and can behave as physical media and playback source now have the capacity to hold significant volumes of uncompressed music. I think that a dock that accesses the music digitally is the answer. If everyone got together and stuck to a format that enabled this then Apples dominance here could be challenged.

 

[Pete The Cat]

Mmmm, been thinking about the original point a bit more...this is just perception but it seems to me that the "enthusiast" 2 channel hi-fi market must be gradually shrinking over time ?

I've been away from the audiophile world for the last 15 years but it feels like in the same way as kids today have video games and mobile phones to distract their expenditure from music, so people who have greater disposable income now have home cinema and other gadgets to consider. When I was younger many people I knew had some sort of separates hi-fi system. Mags like Hi-Fi Answers, Practical Hi-Fi and Popular Hi-Fi weren't unfamiliar to the mainstream public. Nowadays adults are lured by large plasma screen TVs, HD, Sky Plus and systems that supposedly portray the sound of Godzilla getting a bit grumpy. Preferably in several rooms. If you ask for Hi-Fi World in a newsagent today you're likely to be regarded as on the margins along with the knitters and caravanners. I used the term "hi-fi" in a conversation recently and was told that I sounded old-fashioned. Of course, this isn't a difference between 2010 and 2009 but add this ongoing effect to a deep recession and maybe that's a chunk of the answer to the original question.

Pete

 

[Richard Dunn]

We are dying, but we wont die!

I have been inviting people to come and hear the new stuff at my place, and today I had a pro musician (pianist) and jouno from a Belgium Music mag come and visit for the day from Antwerp, bringing a few CD's.

He is an NVA owner so he knew what he had let himself in for . Do you know what, after a few of his CD's I said "hey I have got that on vinyl", well very few CDs went on after that and this is a guy, in his late 30's, who has never owned a turntable in his life, is now looking for a Pioneer PL-71 :MILD:

 

[Dave Simpson]

The future pattern is already set for audiophiles. Vinyl will make a comback with audiophile records produced in small numbers at excessive prices. CD will die. Computer audio will take over from it - the software holders will will see an opportunity to sell the master quality downloads they already hold for silly prices. Which ever way quality music will never be cheap. The semi free downloads will go down in quality.

In fact this could be the salvation of the industry as it will make the master file holders talk up quality as a selling feature, but we have to get this coming recession out the way first.

I think you're probably right on this prediction. I'm buying used CDs hand over fist since they are an unfashionable and cheap source of music which sounds better than anything I've heard downloaded so far. One shift in my media collection (LP to CD) every two decades is enough for me as well.