Do i need a CD player, or can I use Mc Book?


Hello Fellows Audiophiles.

I have decided to go digital and follow the path of progress! I think that the music quality has improved sufficiently to make that move . 

So here is my question: do I need a cd player in the chain to use as transport, or can I use my mac book pro?

Or should I burn all my cd to the laptop and start downloading music from HD sources on the web? Will i need a preamp as well, in the chain, or would a direct DAC/amp connection be better ?

All comments, observations are welcome. Thank you.



rockanroller
While you technically do not "need" one, you probably "want" a dedicated CD player. I'd have to believe there is a quality improvement using a dedicated player. Honestly I'm not a fan of Apple products at all. For a CD player I went the route of an Emotiva ERC-3 and am very happy with the purchase. More than happy if I consider the value (i.e. there are better stand-alone players, however, the cost would be many times greater). Just my .02. 
gdhal I must disagree.The level of quality in todays inexpensive DACS far surpasses most inexpensive cd players & most include Analogue Out so it will act as PreAmp..For all out assault I recommend the SMSL "M8" DSD/DXD DAC,about $250.00 DELIVERED!For simple 24/96 the HiFiMeDIY "SABRE DAC2"can't be beat for UNDER $100.00 Delivered!!!
rockanroller,Archive all cd’s on Macbook,download new HiRes music & use a Streaming Service.Start out with the Free services like Pandora...MacBook>DAC>Amp...Have a look at my headphone system for ideas...
I do both, spin disks and rip onto Mac. Search the forums, several threads concerning all your questions. Many benefits to having CDs ripped to computer. One is that your music can be taken with you.


I agree completely with freedriver. Inevitably you'll want to upgrade some of the components or software in the future but there are so many  advantages to having your music accessible from a computer that the important thing is to get started. It will change the ways you listen to music, for the better.

There are some things to think about as you put it all together. Music takes a lot of disc space and most laptops don't have very large hard drives. It might not take long to fill up the drive on your MacBook, particularly if you start downloading high-res files.

Consider an external hard drive attached to the MacBook as your primary repository and keep your favorites on the MacBook drive for traveling. Hard drive memory is so cheap these days that you should buy a couple of one-terabyte external drives for starters, one as your primary and one as a mirror backup of the primary for the time when your primary fails, which it eventually will. This is really important, you don't want to have spent all those hours ripping CDs and the money spent on downloads just to have it all disappear when a drive fails. And, again, it's not a question of whether a hard drive will fail, the question is when.

Because the components in a laptop have been miniaturized to save space they are a little more prone to failure than external components and they're expensive to replace. I would suggest you get an external CD/DVD reader to do the ripping. They're cheap and a lot less expensive to replace than the internal drive on a MacBook.