If hard drive betters optical digital retrieval

Yamaha had such a product. The Alesis Masterdisk also work in that way.

It's called a Mac Mini - you press import under itunes and play back the CD after 2-3 minutes from the hard drive. And the best thing - you only have to do it once. Why the need to have a CDP - a small PC is much more convenient and flexible for the center of the media system.

Joke aside - it you want the full CD read with error correction into a harddrive that take some time. It would be not very practical for a CDP.

Nah, if you are going to do something like this, it would be better to just transfer the CD info to a flash memory and play it out of there. No spinning discs at all after the data is fully retrieved. Or a small buffering delay if you want to just start playing.

Why, when you can just use a computer?

That being said, I think PS Audio has something in the works that does that.

It's called an Olive. It actually goes one better. It stores the CD onto an internal hard-drive. Next time you play the "CD" you don't have to burn it again. Its already on the hard-drive.

Here's a like to a mod'd one available now on AudiogoN:

http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?dgtlplay&1210721571

Here's a link to the olive site:

http://www.olive.us/home.html

Enjoy,

TIC