Sound Card with External DAC

Granted most CDP will sounds better than most CDRom drives, but there are probably some exceptions out there. I don't diagree with your general statement, just your absolute terms. FWIW RA pulled the CDrom because of an audible whine, but it still sounds pretty damn good!

yes, CDROMs transfer data. If you don't do D-A conversion till the audio data gets out of the computer, then nothing is lost along the way. A bit is a bit. We are in digital world here. Until the digital data is converted to analog signal, then nothing is lost. Some error checking is performed when the CDRom is reading data, either by the operating system, or the IDE controller, or the CDROm itself.

Who uses CDROM's built-in DAC these days? Windows XP reads audio data in digital by default.

yes the computer transfers and works with data. Digital audio is one form of data. Data integrity is very important in computer design. It is an insult to a computer engineer to say that the computer does not maintain data integrity.

Once you got the data out of the computer, then it is pretty much up to the DAC to give you an interpretation of the digital data.

Boogie, maybe you should take it over to the "cables" forum and explain to all the nice Audiphiles that their ears are all wrong.

They, for some reason, think that digital cables sound different. 1s are 1s and 0s are 0s, data is data, by your own admission.

And thats just the cable issue you didnt address the "transport" at all. I guess all those audiophiles who think they make a difference must be wrong as well.

"It is an insult to a computer engineer to say that the computer does not maintain data integrity." Who said that. Let me read my post again. Umm nope.

Well since we are drawing conclusions....

It is an insult to an Audiophile to conclude that all his hard earned money and time are misguided on useless CD transports and high dollar Digital cables.

I guess dejittering is a waste of time/money as well?

Jposs, I said "should" sound better. Definately not absolutely will. Should isnt absolute by any stretch of the imagination.

While trying to not delve into semantics, I had a problem with "any", not "should". But I dont think its necessary to argue with you, because I dont think we disagree.

You're right. It is an insult to an audiophile to conclude that all his hard earned money and time are misguided on useless CD transports and high dollar digital cables.

My point is, CD-audio data is read correctly in digital by CDROM drives, and nothing is loss until it is manipulated or converted to analog. Whatever is stored on disk is read "as is" by the stupid CDROM drive. Hehe, you want pure signal path, the digital signal path is as pure as you can get. :) Data integrity is always the case in the computer. If it is not the case, imagine corrupted files and data happening all the time as you're working with a computer. Since corrupted files and data happen like once in a blue moon on a healthy computer, then you can be sure that data that contains audio information is kept in its full integrity as well.

Well, we're not talking about error-correction stuffs when reading the CD by the CDROM, but the same error-correction is used for other types of data (i.e. spreadsheet, documents) as well.

At the end of the pure digital path, you got a DAC. This is where the action is. Some DAC do tricks like upsampling and others do tricks like dithering. As long as the CD audio data is concerned, it remains pure until this stage.

Dejittering? for what? a bit, is a bit.