How we gonna play our discs in the next future?!

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Business schools are saying that when the patent or copyright expires, invent a totally different product and stop supporting the old one.
 
I found a Tascam 122MKII cassette deck online but it had major transport issues. (I already had a 122 MKIII but that later model did not support dbx noise reduction, necessary for certain digitization projects.) When I brought it into an Indianapolis repair shop, the technician discovered Technics no longer stocked the necessary parts. He suggested I find another 122MKII damaged by a power surge. I did, and fifteen months later it was back in my rack.

The moral: Never assume repair parts will always be available for vintage gear. Any guesses about what Oppo will have in stock during the next decade?
 
I found a Tascam 122MKII cassette deck online but it had major transport issues. (I already had a 122 MKIII but that later model did not support dbx noise reduction, necessary for certain digitization projects.) When I brought it into an Indianapolis repair shop, the technician discovered Technics no longer stocked the necessary parts. He suggested I find another 122MKII damaged by a power surge. I did, and fifteen months later it was back in my rack.

The moral: Never assume repair parts will always be available for vintage gear. Any guesses about what Oppo will have in stock during the next decade?
Even back 40 years ago, I had a Sony Tuner which I took in for repair, they couldn't get the proprietary chip that had failed as Sony stopped production after a couple of years. In the electronic circuits I'm designing now (not for domestic kit), we ask for 15 year guarantees for manufacturing of the IC, but not all semiconductor manufacturers will. There has been a fair amount of semiconductor company take-overs in the last few years and that normally kills of useful devices as the consolidation & integration process happens. So we just have to hope they keep making them. A problem with domestic equipment is that if the processor/ROM fails there is nowhere to get the firmware from.
 
Even back 40 years ago, I had a Sony Tuner which I took in for repair, they couldn't get the proprietary chip that had failed as Sony stopped production after a couple of years.
And today you're screwed if your MiniDisc deck needs alignment because Sony no longer provides the alignment discs. Though I'd like to know how my local shop lost theirs...
 
More likely….after 10 years without any one coming in to have their mini-disc serviced, they lost track of where it was or discarded it.
Yeah, they were perfectly happy to work on my MD recorder, they just had to warn me up-front that if servicing would involve having to remove the loader they would not be able to do because they had no way to re-align it properly after putting it back in.

Fortunately, all it needed was a cleaning.
 
Actually the obvious answer to this question is to just rip the discs to the hard drive. Discs and players will eventually disappear at about the same time. For those of us old timers I don't think that we have to worry about that eventuality at all. I still stand by my original posts about vintage equipement. There will be a lot of used players available even if new ones have long been discontinued!

There are many tools are out there for ripping SACD, DVD-Audio and Blu-ray. It is sad that we have to jump through hoops to defeat encryption to make our "back-up" copies. CD's are much easier to copy with few using encryption.

I love physical media, but for convenience you can't beat having your music files stored on your computer. Playing the ripped files from the computer or via your Oppo sans the disc saves wear and tear on your player and is much more convenient. Making digital copies of my vinyl collection serves the same purpose, convenience, equipment and record preservation.

I am not advocating copying your collection just so that you can resell the originals. That is what the Industry is worried about, likely why they like the streaming model. To me steaming is just renting a title, comparable to listening to a juke box or radio. Streamed audio can be copied as well so there is no easy solution for the record industry.
 
https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1196831

Strangely, Pioneer kept making Laserdisc players for about 10 years after disc manufacturing stopped...


Re: Streaming:
My main fear about (stereo) streamed audio is that it won't be discrete L and R stereo but will be a form of joint stereo (IIRC, first used on the MP1 VideoCD soundtrack) which will probably adversely affect the derived surround sound.


Kirk Bayne
 
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