14 DAY TRIAL // Looks like CD players could soon be vintage. Apple products are better music players than many hi-fi CD players, said AVI mogul Ashley James to Tech.co.uk. He thinks Apple hardware such as iPods and Mac Minis, though far from being the perfect tool, deliver better sound better quality than many of the Hi-fi CD players out there.
"Let's have the facts, and you can bloody well say this: I can think of at least six makes of CD players that are highly reviewed, five stars and all the blather that goes with it, that are considerably worse than an iPod," said AVI's Ashley James.
The AVI mogul says some of the CD players today are so bad that one couldn't listen to them. iPods are a much better alternative, according to Ashley James. "We took the iPod nano and we plugged it into the most expensive hi-fi systems. And the music is slightly hard, if you've got to be critical. But, honestly and truthfully, at normal listening levels you're never going to say 'I can't stand that'."
James predicts sales in CD players will continue to drop (to zero, eventually) and we all know how Apple is doing with iPod sales (90 million iPods sold, 21 million last quarter alone). Apple's iPod is the most appreciated music player ever and soon enough all the music will simply be downloaded.
"We've seen player sales drop and most people we talk to have said the same thing. There are a number of reasons; the first is that CD player mechanisms are nothing like as reliable as a hard disk mechanism,[...]." AVI's Ashley James said he "wouldn't be surprised if people end up just buying music from the internet and playing it on their Macs and PCs."