Posted by Steve Guttenberg

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

The end is near, another war seems imminent, oil prices continue to rise, the dollar is in free fall, and now audiophiles have abandoned the CD. Don’t get the wrong idea, they haven’t all dumped their CD players for turntables (I wish), no, they’ve bought music servers of some kind or another. How can this be happening?

I read the sad news on the Stereophile web page, or more specifically the online magazine’s July 6, Vote! feature. That week’s question was, how do you listen to digital music, and the poll says 34 percent still use CD players as their primary digital source. Yikes, I would have guessed much higher, more like 70 percent. Thirty six percent use a computer-based server, and 10 percent more use dedicated servers such as Sonos or Squeezebox. Another 4 percent use iPods! I felt a little better that 11 percent use a SACD or DVD-Audio player.

Mind you, these are Stereophile (online) readers, presumably the print readership would skew towards CD players. Or not.

Whatever, something’s going on. Audiophiles tend to be a conservative bunch, or at least I thought they were. Me, I listen primarily to CDs and maybe 20 percent of the time to LPs. I cannot imagine using a music server anytime soon, and sound quality issues have nothing to do with that. I like picking music from my collection, it’s a touchy-feely, organic process. One album leads to the next, or I accidentally find something I haven’t listened to in years.

What about you? What are you listening to? news.cnet.com