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It's designed for audiophiles, what did you expect? Audiophiles are the kind of people who are willing to pay premium cash for a light pen (you know, for coloring the CD's....). Or how about these cables? After all, it produces sound that is "Notably relaxed and highly detailed" (just like the stuff I defecated yesterday) for only $9000 for eight foot pair of speaker-cables! And when you REALLY want that "something extra" to your sound-quality, here's a wooden knob for just $485.

This pointless technology serves no more audio-fidelity improving purpose than the hundreds of ridiculous inert gimmicks gullible "audiophiles" have been buying for years, such as Stop Light Pen or the fabulous $485 wooden knob. Disappointing to see cash-hemorrhaging Sony in desperation stoop to the level of these other scamsters.

SACD and DVD-audio both offer actual audio fidelity improvement, but were always commercial non-starters given the expensive and mostly obscure hardware needed for playback. Imagine if the DVD consortium back in the day had included the DVD-audio specification in the basic DVD player profile so that all the millions of DVD players out there today could play them. We would have had ubiquitous high-quality audio playback hardware today, and a greater market would have accordingly existed for high quality disc-based audio formats. It might have kept the recording industry scam going for longer.

You seem to be only the third person to point that out -- and on the site labeled "new for nerds". Come on people!

That probably explains why there are plenty of clueless audiophiles who spend money on worthless snake-oil like the Audioprism CD Stop Light Pen. Thanks to the media being digital, CDs are already read perfectly every time (unless terribly damaged).

And, reading the title assuming they know what they are talking about, of course people still selling only cassette tapes will go out of business, if they haven't already.

Nah, you had to blacken a few of the outermost millimeters of the actual surface to foil that copy protection. GP is referring to marking the edge of a cd with some kind of pen.

This is totally flamebait. As another poster pointed out, you're wrong about the master-to-vinyl vs. master-to-cd process. But that's not why I'm replying...

I buy a lot of vinyl. Not because I think it sounds better, just because I like it better. Here's why:

• Most of the bands I like press vinyl. The records don't usually cost more than the CDs to buy, even though they're more expensive to make. I don't listen to a lot of really super-weird bands or anything. A lot of independent labels (Merge, Matador, Killrockstars, Constellation, etc.) press vinyl for their artists. and even some major labels are getting into it.
• You get a bigger, nicer version of the cover art.
• It looks better on the shelf in my front room than a bunch of CDs (seriously, it does)
• Frequently, the record will come with a slip of paper with a link and a download code to grab reasonable-quality MP3s from the label's website (again, see Matador). If that's not the case, I can always download the MP3s from a more dubious source. Either way, I can burn them onto a CD if I need to (roadtrips, mix CDs, etc.) and I've still got that sexy piece of wax sitting in my living room.
• A lot of bands will release vinyl-only albums or include "bonus" tracks on the vinyl pressings of their LPs.
• Very rarely, a band or label will commission an "audiophile" re-master of an album on heavy vinyl. The most recent example of this is the new White Stripes album, Icky Thump. The retail CD & LP are mastered terribly--they clip constantly as a result of over-zealous compression. (Remember? That's the part you got wrong in your post...) But discerning listeners can seek out the Steve Hoffman re-master. That's right: it came out last week and it's already been re-mastered. And you can only buy it on vinyl. How's that for a counter-example?
• This is kind of a fluff reason, but it just feels better to buy vinyl. And since I started collecting the stuff, I've received no less than half a dozen hand-written notes from record labels I've bought from, thanking me for supporting their businesses. So apparently, it feels better to sell the stuff too :P

As far as the sound goes... my LPs sound every bit as good as your CDs. Yeah, my turntable is an ornery pig sometimes, but it's usually just a loose cable or something. So, are CDs obsolete? I think so. Especially in the retail world. Every now and then, an album comes out that I want that isn't available on vinyl--in that case, I usually cave and buy the CD. Like I said, though, it's becoming more and more common to find every new release I'm interested in on wax.

PS: Between the time I started typing this and the time I pressed preview, your post got moderated down by 2. BONUS!!

Ohhh. really. I have a pair of thousand dollar cables to sell you.....

Are you a Kimber cable rep? The silver low resistance cables rock!
http://www.elusivedisc.com/prodinfo.asp?number=AUD IAU24B1

The link is for those who don't believe anyone would pay a grand for a patch cord.
It is real.

Actually, some audiophiles DO still claim that nothing beats vinyl records, ignoring the limitations inherent in the medium. Whether these audiophiles represent most audiophiles or a subset of audiophiles is a question I don't know the answer to, but these people most certainly DO still exist. Take a look at http://www.elusivedisc.com/ for one web site that sells a lot of very expensive equipment designed specifically for vinylphiles. They do sell high end CDs too, but what they primarily push are very expensive turntables and accessories for such turntables.