Will computer to DAC replace transports and cdp's?

Matrix

To your comment:
"an Apple type computer is suppose to be excellent, but Ipod itself is not near the quality of CD from my understanding."

An iPod is just a very small hard drive installed in a very small case with some software to navigate to the songs you want. It's entirely up to the user whether the music on the iPod is stored in a format that is identical to the original CD or compressed.

The limitation of the iPod as a source is that it's designed primarily for convenience and portability, meaning there is no digital output and the number of uncompressed songs you can store is limited by the available capacity of 1 inch hard drives.

If you go to a slightly larger device size, to something like an Archos Jukebox, you get a 2.5 inch hard drive with theoretically higher capacity and USB connection.

As with all other things audio you just pick your system based on format, form factor, price, quality and convenience, there's no right or wrong choice.

Bravo Edesilva -- great post. Tons of info in there.

Hi Jeremy,
Assuming we can burn the info off the cd in a bit perfect manner (many programs can),then what you have is two mediums with the same data. One is a 50 cent piece of plastic that is prone to scratches, in a poor clamped transport that looses data and corrects for it, with some vibration in the horizontal plane. The other is a bearing, platter and read mechanism that is built to strict tolerances, extracts data in a perfect manner, and does not scratch like plastic. They have a lot less vibration because the industry has spent billions in R & D.
We need look no further than phono cartriges. A better phono cartridge extracts the data from the same record better, the data (the record) is the same.
So in the playback of that data, the dac is presented with all the data, in a more perfect manner.
You are probably correct about hi rez as we know it (SACD & DVD_A) won't last . Computer audio has a lot less boundries. 24/96 and 24/192 is fine if you have the hard drive space. Has anyone heard Wilson Audio's master recordings at CES. They are breathtaking!!! Why can't we pay more and get what we really want?

Dweller... you only have to do most of it once... The post on how I play the stuff is much different:

Turn on stereo.
Pick up airpanel.
Use library to conveniently select one of 15,000 songs.
Double tap.
Song plays.

While I wasn't actually playing music in the sixties, it can't have been easy finding LPs with only a black light to guide you and no short term memory... ;)