Will computer to DAC replace transports and cdp's?

No doubt about it. I very rarely use my transport anymore. Absolutely cannot tell the difference between my transport and the same music through the same DAC as a WAV or Apple Lossless, through my HD. Nothing like having your entire music library at your fingertips with only the push of a few buttons. I have the same concerns as Grant about downloading, not just with regards to the death of the "album", but also if compression and mediocrity in recording and digitizing the music becomes the norm rather than the exception.

Marco

so tvad, what do you think needs to be overcome before a computer hard drive to a dac will surpass state of the art transports and cdps? i'm thinking it might already be time to switch. I was thinking of buying an Emm Labs setup but the more i think about it, the less sense it makes. currently i'm researching a stand-alone silent computer with separate high speed hard drives (two, stripped) and a high end usb or firewire tube dac. I'd like to burn all my cds in wav format and use a palm pilot as my remote control. if i could find a tube dac with a good volume pot. then i'd think about doing without a preamp and havin a different setup for my vinyl.

I switch to a hard drive system back in early 2000 and have never looked back. Having your music easily accessible, but more importantly having it organized in multiple ways via playlists is a tremendous boon to listening to your entire collection. And to Tvad's concern, you can organize playlisst via albums so that you can play the entire CD as originally recorded.

My primary concern has been software upgrades. I use Apple's iTunes on a Mac hardware platform. Since 2000 Apple went from OS9 to Jaguar and now Tiger as major system software upgrades and now they are switching to Intel chips for another system software change. I should also mention that within each system software version there were numerous upgrades such as 10.2.4 to 10.2.6 to contend with. Additionally, every few months there is a new revised version of iTunes. The problem is that every software upgrade has the potential of really screwing up your system. I've never been seriously burned, but you have to be very careful and do a good deal of research before implementing what seems like even minor software upgrade. And if you don't upgrade, eventually Apple will stop supporting your software version, which while not terminal, has it's own set of serious problems.

My solution to all this is to keep two separate computer systems. One system is the master version and the other is slaved. The slave system is always one software revision behind the master. For instance, right now the master is using Jaguar 10.3.4 and iTunes 4.7.1 while the slave is using 10.2.8 and 4.01. You just have to deal with the fact that computers suck!

Enough about the bad stuff. It's a phenomenal way to listen to music. I would strongly recommend you utilize all the features of iTunes, or its equivalent, database. Give a star rating to each song. That way you can sort by how much you like each song and eliminate ever listening to the "dogs" of you collection. Tag each song by genre, release date, purchase date, composer and label. The more info you add, the greater your ability to organize playlist.

QUESTION: I still keep the original CD after I've ripped it. Do you keep your CDs?

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).