As go the Vinyl and 8-track, so too goes the compact disc player

Not the actual cds, of course. For several years now, our household has listened to digital music 97% of the time. And although I've got a really nice storage and organization system (compact, easy to retrieve) with way over 1000 discs, there's virtually no way to avoid some clutter.

On Tuesday the UPS man (cue music: "The Wells Fargo Wagon") will deliver our second Squeezebox and all of the cds and cd player will be put taken out of routine service. I'm audiophile enough that it will still be a long time before I forgo having the full uncompressed .wav versions of recordings I purchase but the discs will no longer be within grasp after ripping to my music server. I bought my first cd player in 1987...I wonder what's coming next...