I have a feeling that LP’s might be going out of fashion and that CD are soon going to be the “niche thing”. The generation that is now into LPs, is the one that saw their parents use LPs and maybe had a few of their own.

The situation is now the same with the new generation. They saw their parents use CDs before everything became immaterial files. The jump from LPs to CDs was definitely not as drastic as the the move from a disc to a file. This leads me to think that the rise of the CD will be even bigger. People just have a tendency to like and collect physical objects.

In order to prepare myself for this next revolution, I recently acquired a CD and cassette player! At the same time I decided to start putting together a collection of classic CDs, like G’n'R Use Your Illusion for instance. And this thought came to me 4 years after I sold them all Anyways, the greater surprise was the cassette player. The sound that comes out is immaculate, music like Christmas songs never sounded better. Somehow the tone just has a more authentic feel to it.

As I was buying the player, I became intrigued with vintage Bang & Olufsen products. I decided to go for the BeoSound Century system from approximately 2001. The system is an integrated cd/fm radio/cassette with speakers. There are several facinating things about the system, to name a few:

1. The glass door that moves away at the show of the hand.
2. The aux-plug is a DIN.
3. It comes without a remote (Beo4).

BeoSound Century from Beoworld site

I managed to program a Sony universal remote to operate well with the system. I have yet to build a DIN plug to connect my laptop, so that is going to be a project at some point. I guess I also want to buy the remote one day, just because it is so nice.

Prices on the systems have tended to be around 500 EUR and remotes that I’ve seen have been in the 80 EUR range.