CD format war and resultant music players

The transport from the hard drive itself into your DAC involves a number of components--the hard drive cable, the motherboard, the soundcard, the I/O between the sound card and the DAC, and all sort of computer components that could general noises to the line. And I don't know about performance differences between various multimedia softwares regarding their reading of these digital information. One would think that pure "1" and "0" binary numbers from your hard drive are just that until they are converted into analog signal by your DAC. Yet CD transport is a technology by itself. So what about hard drive transport? It would help if the real audiophile manufacturers say yeah or neh as opposed to relying on the computer geeks.

So then, now we just have the top end CD players and turntables. Only a few years from now, somebody decides to turn a reader that just reads CDs into one that reads CDs and hard drives. The player could be an independent box hooked up to your DAC or preamp. Or it could be an audiophile computer. Will I have to invest in such music player all over again, after doing something about my system now? I rather think not. The point is that hard drive is rich with space. A lot of digital information could be stored per song to make it sounds good relative to redbook CDs. So the general public have their boring computers to download music. While these audiophile companies turn the hard drive transport system into good sound producting computer. And who knows what kind of preamp it takes to receive such signal from the hard drive transport.

This hard drive thing is a serious contender. It's not just us amateurs talking here. I read an article in Sound and Vision a few hours ago discussing the shrinking market of CDs in light of music download. The professionals already started throw up out number of years before possible disappearance, complete or partial, of CDs. That article even mentioned certain bands who won't release music into CDs. Instead it would strictly be for downloading. Somebody complained about how the recording studios took all their money through CD mastering and distribution.

Mr Svhoang, the future is now. it is here. Search the net and you will find a large number of USB DACs at various price points.

There is no such thing as an audiophile computer or hard drive. There are a number of programs that make bit perfect copies of the data on a CD and store it on your hard drive..The idea is to rip the CD to a hard drive and not use the CD/DVD drive as a transport.

That's it. It is a perfect copy. You cannot make anything better than a perfect copy. It doesn't matter if "audiophile companies" get involved. They cannot improve on perfection.

Once you have a perfect copy the computer does not corrupt the data. If it did the programs wouldn't run and your files would be corrupted all of the time. This simply doesn't happen very often, and when it does (if you are smart) you have a perfect backup copy of your perfect data.

I finally look around on the Internet regarding music server versus CDP. It appears that usb DAC, with the included interest from Stereophile, performs at least at the level of the Linn Unidisk SC which is an upper but not top end CDP. I also searched for comments on the Squeezebox version 3 to wirelessly remove the noisy server away from the stereo system. And there are design limitations to this piece, along with suggested modifications from private outfits. It seems that the music server/DAC idea give traditional CDP manufacturers a run for their money. However, the technology is young and need time to develop. Basically we are back to the sit still and do nothing with traditional equipment upgrade or cutting edge technology.

Anybody cares to disagree? Thanks.

You can use any DAC in the world with a music server. A well designed computer can be dead quiet. This technology has been around for many years. In what way do you think this is infant technology?

Digital is constantly changing and will continue to constanly change, so if you wait around for the final solution it will never arrive. Even one box CD players are much better today than they were just a few years ago and CDs have been around for 20 years. If you are waiting for a mature technology then I would go with vinyl.

If you are basing your opinions on what you read in Stereophile then just buy a Musical Fidelity CD player and be happy.

One of the important advantages of both SACD and DVD-A is that it forces the recording studios and music companies to pay some attention to the sounds below 100 Hz and above 12 Khz, to use better microphones, and generally not process the sound to death.
If you record for example a short guitar piece with a top quality microphone with good digital gear in the right environment and play it back immediately then the quality is way better than anything delivered on CD, SACD, DVD-A or anything else available commercially. We are being completely short-changed in terms of sound quality at the production end, apart from the delivery end.
I suspect this problem will be dealt with by market forces once the record companies are out of the picture and distribution of music in the form of files becomes the norm.