Will computer to DAC replace transports and cdp's?

As I have stated many time elsewhere, I changed over to a hard-drive based system last Spring and too have never looked back (I have iterated the reasons before and they have been stated in this thread already, so I am not going to repeat the now obvious reasons why the change makes sense). As to the question of whether to keep the CD's or not, here is what I have decided. I will keep all remastered and audiophile grade CD's and will sell everything else.

At first I thought I would not sell them because, what if my hard-drive crashed? Well, I solved that issue by always having my music backed up on a second drive. I have become so convinced that server-based music systems are the future, I want to be able to get something for my CD's before they become virtually worthless (which I think will happen within about 5 years for older issue and non-remastered discs).

I've been on a Mac platform since '97. The only problems I've ever had were in various versions of the largely extinct OS9. OSX has run flawlessly and effortlessly an rarely requires any serious attention. On the other hand, I do have friends whose experience in upgrading various versions of OSX have been rather frustrating, like Onhwy61. I protect my music library in several ways. First, and most important for me is to store me entire music library on a dedicated, external hard drive. None of my music library is on my main computer. I have a copy on a second hard drive...or rather on a friend's second hard drive, and I've also strated to back up the entire library to DVD's in case of a double failure. I've just recently sold off a group of CD's that I listened to less often, or had duplicates of. For some reason I have a hard time selling off the ones I like most. I think it 's the pack rat in me though. Regarding organizing play lists like albums - I think Grant's concern was around the trend of downloading music a few songs at a time via the Internet. When you buy an 'album' on the Internet (via iTunes for instance), you have the option of purchasing the entire album, or as many songs as you like, or even just one single song. If you look at Apple's current home page there is a counter running currently with the number of song's sold that is increasing as almost as fast as our National debt it seems. For the moment (perhaps not for very much longer), you can see their countdown to the billionth song sold here. Sadly, all this music being purchased is compressed.

Marco

I've setup my dad with an Escient music server (only has a 120 gig hard drive) but the access to the music is incredible. I'm listening to music i haven't heard in years because it's easier than searching through my nearly 1000 cdsl. I don't have cds all over the place anymore, either. I keep all the cds after i burn them but in boxes stored away for an emergency that no doubt will someday come.

Does anyone know about the faster Glyph drives used for music mastering? They're much more expensive than a typical commercial computer-user hard drive but they are more quiet, more reliable and have other advantages.

What external dacs are you guys using? Do any have a volume pot?