04/12/2009 Linn cease production of CD players.

Tagged under CD, Hard drive recorder, Hi-Fi, Hush, Linn, Olive
Posted by Len | 1 Comment

The recent announcement by Linn that they were discontinuing the manufacture of CD players has created a flurry of interest around the world. Linn, like many (most?) people in the audio industry believe that the days of the CD player are numbered and that CD’s will be replaced by streaming from a hard drive or streamed direct via the internet. Linn however are the first company to put their money where their convictions are and take the radical, if maybe a little premature, step of discontinuing CD player manufacturing.

Linn have positioned themselves well for this move, they have been promoting their range of DS (Digital Streaming) products for some years now, and maintain that sales of their DS products are far exceeding those of their CD players.

And while I believe that their move may be a little early, they have picked a growing swell of consumers who are expressing interest in the higher performance (and the convenience) available from hard-drive based music solutions.

Earlier today I saw the press release from US based company Olive Media who has announced the introduction of their first HD Hi-Fi Music Server. This is a 2 terabyte server designed to handle 24bit/192kHz music files. It can access any digitised music library, and has a built in CD mechanism for recording discs directly to its own drive. It even comes with 12 HD tracks from high-end record label Chesky Records. We do not know when this unit will be available in Australia, but we do know that it will sell in the US for US$2,000.

There is no doubt that these are only instances of what is going to be a huge swing back to performance listening of music. There will be more companies taking the lead from people like Linn and Olive next year. We are still playing around with a Hush computer we recently bought in from Germany, we are expecting a Lynx audio card (to handle the 24/196 information) from the US next week, plus we have been listening to the amazing Berkeley Alpha DAC for some time now.

It may still be early days for this format, but it promises to be fun.

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