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I enjoy music from both my CDP and my PC but each has it's place.
Having said that, listening to a CD is a much more satisfying and visceral experience for me. Also, dollar-for-dollar, you'll get a better audio experience from a CD than something that's been ripped.
I also find the experience of browsing through my CD's a VASTLY more enjoyable experience to scrolling through Albums, Artists and Titles on the assorted hardware and software solutions I can use to play my MP3 & FLAC files!
I kind of see this as an example of the difference between those often younger people who see music as a commodity; versus those that still remember when buying music was essentially the only option. Where the physical ownership aspect and the of the product and it's presentation as well as the music made for a more complete experience. In buying each CD I have time to absorb and enjoy the music. These days with the ease and rate of downloading music I see people on various forums with MP3 collections of several hundreds of gigabytes of music. Do these people spend the same amount of time enjoying each song album?
The advantage of a cdp over a stand alone dac: you get to fiddle with shiny discs.
I'm not sold on the benefits. I use a mac mini with 2 drives for my library, 1 as library, and 1 as backup. I still have all my cds. The ability to listen to music on demand continuously, rather than being interrupted every time I need to switch discs is huge. And anyone who thinks hard drives are more fragile than discs doesn't have kids.
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mac mini -> apogee duet -> tooleaudio balanced mosfet amp -> luxman lv-113 -> home theater direct level 3 bookshelf speakers
mac mini -> apogee duet -> tooleaudio balanced mosfet amp -> grado/headphile zebra hf1s
tooleaudio denon dvd2900 -> tooleaudio balanced mosfet amp -> grado/headphile zebra hf1s
1st gen ipod shuffle 1gb -> Altec Lansing iM616
"And so that's how a silly joke turned into one of the seminal rock songs of all time"
It depends on your budget. A well made single chassis CD player introduces zero jitter between the transport and the DAC section. Whereas most computer digital outs have very high intrinsic jitter. So to have a state of the art music server it's not as simple as plugging a TOS cable into your soundcards TOS connector and using lossless compression. To build a dedicated Music Server is much more difficult and expensive than most users believe.
The computer must be configured just so, and then not used for other applications. When other applications are installed they change certain registry settings and program priorities that have a striking effect on the overall sound.
How the digital signal is created and then the type of interface also has a huge effect on the SQ. A simple soundcard with digital out just doesn't cut it. Mine uses a Pro Mixing card that only has AES/EBU and has astoundingly low levels of jitter.
I have such a server. It was expensive, and ripping my collection is extremely tedious. Soon I will also be adding an external RAID server for redundancy (And possibly extra space - My 1.5 TB Music server may run out of space).
But when done properly such a dedicated server (When paired with an appropriate DAC) outperforms any single chassis player or Transport/DAC combination.
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My candle burns at both ends...
If you haven’t addressed Vibration Control your system is not performing as well as it could.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety - Benjamin Franklin.
Greatest Joy: Crushing my enemies, and seeing them driven before me, and to hear the lamentation of the women.
All views expressed are IMHO and are in no way meant to denigrate anyone’s equipment or musical preferences.
Now GO Away…. I’m thinking (trying to sleep)......... Dreaming of soft Philadelphia Pretzels with Mustard. (The yellow kind. Not that brown s##t)
But when done properly such a dedicated server (When paired with an appropriate DAC) outperforms any single chassis player or Transport/DAC combination.
I assume you mean with regard to convenience factor? SQ-wise it could go either way depending on hardware.
__________________ Home Rig: Coby mp3 -> Boostaroo -> Bose Triports!
It depends on your budget. A well made single chassis CD player introduces zero jitter between the transport and the DAC section. Whereas most computer digital outs have very high intrinsic jitter. .
I agree that computers have higher jitter, but don't think it is audible.
The error correction that a CDP uses is more detrimental to the sound. EAC+HD eliminates error correction.
It depends on your budget. A well made single chassis CD player introduces zero jitter between the transport and the DAC section. Whereas most computer digital outs have very high intrinsic jitter. .
What sort of numbers are we talking about here ?
I always understood that the only place that jitter matters at all is at the DAC when the data word is decoded, until the data buffer (which all CDPs have) is filled nothing gets done so there can be no effect ?
Also CDPs have very robust error correction, CIRC allows two levels of correction and error streams of 1000s of consecutive bits are trivially corrected.
Linear Mode
