Will CD players production be discontinued?

I suggest reading the post directly above yours…

 

RIP all your CD's to HD then backup to another HD (Safe copy) and also store in the Cloud.

 

they never stopped making turntables, right?

 

I've considered buying a spare, new CD5si and storing it in the box 'til the day the CD5 is toast. I was wondering though, if I were to start using it 5, 10, 15 years after purchase would the lubricants and rubber parts inside still be good? ...

 

Less and less so, and many of the ones out now are junk. I did a custom build PC about two years ago; I mentioned I needed a DVD drive and the staff at the store looked at me like I'd asked for a dial-up modem. They didn't have any in stock and apparently didn't bother keeping them on hand any more. Had to order one off of Amazon. My employer just gave me a new laptop for work; no optical disc drive at all. Apple dropped them from all their computers years ago.

I remind everyone who says "they will be around for decades, there are so many discs around" to remember the lesson of the cassette: 30 years ago, it was the most common format, with many households having multiple players. Today you cannot get a decent new deck at all, despite all the unique homemade recordings done with them and countless commercial recordings not issued on any other format. Even with the so-called "revival", it's still far too niche to justify the R&D to produce a quality deck. CrO₂ and metal tapes are long gone and are very unlikely to ever be manufactured again... it's a minor miracle that plain ol' Type I tape is back in production.

Think also of film and film cameras: for generations, this is how all photography was done. There were camera and film development shops everywhere (and Fotomats before that), decades of images which were captured on film negatives, entire business empires like Kodak built around film... all gone in the space of a few years. Seismic shifts in industries happen fast once the masses make the switch. And even though there are still people who want quality cassettes/cassette decks/film cameras, the problem is these products is that, unlike a 78RPM turntable, they rely on components and materials which cannot be made on a small scale at any price that would be even remotely cost-effective.

So while I'm hopeful there will still be new disc players to buy in a few years, I wouldn't say with confidence that there will be.

 

If you are referring to the post 1 prior to mine I have no issue with it at all and I’m quite happy with that approach!

My ire is for the person that has no interest in CD’s or CD players and comes into a thread like this and says “who cares about CD, just rip them and play files, it’s the same or better!”.

That is a thread crap!

 

They still make new cassette players. Doubtful it will go away completely.

 

Lots of people on this forum, perhaps.

But if you look around beyond this bubble, you'll find that most people ditched the format entirely over a decade ago. Buying CDs now reminds me of buying vinyl LPs in the 1990s: I live in a large city but I could only name a couple of shops which sell them, they're usually imports, and you can't count on them having a specific title, even a current chart hit, in stock at all.

 

But none that are worth buying.

 

I have two SACD players and one standby CD player. Two Blue ray players that play everything. I have ripped all I possess. But I think the CD era isn't over yet.

 

Seriously, WTF are you talking about? The referenced post made exactly the same points I did.

 

I expect dedicated SACD/CD players to be around because it has its own niche audiophile market. I do think blu-ray players are disappearing fast because movie guys are not as dedicated a.k.a keen on owning physical media/ movie blu rays. I think the release of the 500 dollar Sony Playstation 5 (which is a gaming console that also comes with a good quality 4k UHD player) on its own may have seriously hurt other manufacturers who try to offer blu ray players.

 

CD and DVD are an archive format. Archivists use them to archive music and video. The CD drives and DVD drives will still be made, if only to support the archivists. But reality will be that the drives will continue to be made to support us (music and audio nerds with physical collections of CD and DVD).

Factories in China know how to make CD and DVD drives. And Blu-ray too. They'll continue to make them. Why would factories in China stop making the drives? They know how. The engineering is all done. The manufacturing part is easy for them. They have the tools and tooling. And I think the tech is old enough now that they can make them without having to deal with royalty or licensing. So they'll continue to make the drives.

So I don't foresee an issue getting computer CD/DVD drives in the future for the next 20 or 30 or 40 years. There may be an issue getting drives for audio only CD players. But many modern CD players are using data drives anyways.

I do foresee that new dedicated audio only CD players could get very uncommon in 20+ years. But I suspect you'll still be able to buy a transport and just connect the transport to your DAC of choice. And presto! You got a CD player.

I'm not worried about CD and DVD playback. The drives will continue to be available.

I am more worried about SACD playback in 20 or 40 years. SACD has proprietary encryption to deal with, and is not an official archive format. I don't think even the Chinese factories know how to make a bootleg SACD drive that will properly play an SACD disc. So those SACD discs could be a problem to play if SACD players stop getting made.

 

Blame streaming! Thankfully CDs are still being made. Let's hope that not all will be made as CD-R discs. I've been burned (no pun intended) a time or two there.

 

That isn’t what I read in any of his posts, so I must have missed something.

 

I've noticed the few remaining multi disc players have been discontinued within the past year. My 30 year multi disc Kenwood is still hanging in there, but is showing some fits.

 

Maybe for you, but I bought a new TEAC W-1200 cassette deck a few months ago and I'm thrilled with it.

 

If he's talking about other threads wherein I've been extremely bearish about a potential resurgence of the CD format akin to what's happened with vinyl over the last 15 years... that's just what I think is cold hard reality; nothing to do with what I personally want to see happen.

I miss the days of record stores, elitist owners/clerks, eagerly-anticipated release dates, MTV that played music videos... the whole thing!

Anyway... it would be great of there were lots of CD player options 15 years from now for those who want them. I plan to be around 15 years from now, but am not sure if my current CD transport will be, even though I just got a new one this year. The last one didn't make it quite 10 years. So good thing I migrated primarily to playing the files now, and won't have to rip all of those discs later on if there are hardware issues.

 

You’re worrying too much

 

Year 1990:
Will Turntable production be discontinued?

 

You can learn in 15 minutes if you wanted to, and it’d be a worthwhile investment if you’ve already spent that much money on a car. That or see if the dealer/third party shop can swap it out for an older stereo that features a CD player.

In addition, USB ports on a car stereo aren’t just for thumb drives, usually you can plug your iPod, iPhone or Android in and just play it straight off there. That’s exactly what my father (in his 60s) does.

 

A lot of us have jobs and have better things to do than sitting behind a computer and backing up 1000s cds.

 

Great, but that's a different argument altogether.

FWIW, it's not all that hard and the return on investment is utterly phenomenal but I of course understand if someone just hasn't got the ability to do it.

 

I started such a project twice, first time the device I used went into software coma when I reached "Asia", the second time my hard drive crashed when I reached "Depeche Mode". I sit behind a PC all day at work, I don't enjoy any computer activity after work hours. When I retire in 15 years I consider disconnecting from the digital world altogether (except for devices such as cd players that only need me to push buttons on a remote).

 

That's a very good question, just the kind of thing I would do . I look forward to an expert's answer.