I being a self proclaimed 'young audiophile' at the age of 29 have been considering what it will take to keep this hobby alive over the next 10-20 years. Question. How many people do you know under the age of 30 who are into high fidelity?
The future of high fidelity lies in digital sources of information -- both for stereo recordings and movie pictures (music, after all is only packet of information for the ears :-). I for one would be hurting without a USB input to my DAC to feed my linestage. For all my music is readily available at my finger tips (in .wav files, large hardrives!). Not only does my computer source my music to my ears but also allows motion pictures to be heard over tube gear. Digital format is the future of source information and we'd better embrace it, find better ways to encode/decode it or we will be on the endangered species list in 20 years.