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Mr. Obvious (?) - digital source (burn)

After decades of improved CD players, I’ve been enjoying an Oppo BDP-103, on audio only.   I now ponder the idea of a home music server, replacing the silver discs.  After reading about the burning process (pit impressions and blank/land space), I’m thinking this front-end physical step creates the same coding on a CD Master Disc, on a hard drive, and on my burned discs via my home Mac.  Home music servers use a hard drive, as do streaming services.  They all use the exact same coding, via a hard drive or 4.7 inch disc.  Correct?   As to the all important sound quality, is the Only variable the DAC doing the de-coding before listening?  I doubt a CD Transport affects sound quality(?).  End question - any need for a home server vs. popping in my manageable group of CDs?   Perhaps there is an engineer out there who can chime in.   Thanks.
bigguy4488
tomcy6's avatar
tomcy6
2,587 posts
 
Transports can but do not always affect sound quality. 

No need to go to server unless you hate playing cds but like ripping them. 

Streaming is the direction music distribution is heading.  It has the advantage of giving you access to a lot of music, but you don't own it.  I expect monthly fees to rise once they have a good hold on the market.
erik_squires
16,051 posts
 
Um, one major variable is whether you are using a lossy or lossless format.

Losless formats like ALAC, FLAC, WAV, should produce a bit-identical replay to the CD they were ripped from. MP3, Ogg, and others do not. There is some argument as to whether WAV on some streamers sounds better due to how they handle the decompression of ALAC or FLAC files. Again, ALAC and FLAC are lossless, but compressed.

MP3, Ogg are lossy and compressed. You cannot reconstruct a perfect copy from them.

Streaming services vary quite a bit, with Tidal being one of the few offering CD quality.


roberjerman
4,319 posts
 
Hard drives crash and die! You better have at least two storing your data. Otherwise, goodbye music collection! That's why I will stick with my collection of CD players!
big_greg
6,623 posts
 
 I've been slowly copying my CD collection to a dedicated hard drive on my network. It's more for convenience sake than sound quality. It's much easier to scroll through a list on the screen of my phone or tablet than dig through piles of discs. I rip to flac and the sound quality is great.

I use a free sync program to automatically copy the files to another drive every night and also back them up in the cloud.
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