Why use CD Transport instead of computer source

Ncarv... I echo Tonyptony. Streaming lossy internet radio is good, FLAC lossless is far better, but still not quite the same as sourced from my CD transport. My comparisons were with FLAC lossless copies ripped from the same CD using EAC and volume matched.

I don't doubt that the highly modded units can match or exceed a good CDP or transport. But to be honest, there is something about selecting a CD and dropping it in the transport that I still enjoy almost as much as I do with vinyl. For that reason, I will likely always have a transport even though the vast majority of music playing in my house every day is via the Squeezebox.

I bought one of the original Transporters which I am using at this moment. I route it through the Audio Aero Capitole's DAC as I think it sounds much 'warmer' while the Transporter's DAC which is relly good, just a bit too 'bright', or as some would say, more 'analytic'.

To get back to your question, my original CDs do sound better using the AA's transport than the music ripped into my Apple G5 using lossless routed to my Transporter via CAT6 cable and using the AES EBU cable to the Capitole.

I suspect the reason might be that the AA is first a CD player and it was made to work its magic on a CD, with the other digital sources not being so harmonious.

Still, last night I doownloaded the Transporter's latest software upgrade and this morning it sounds, I believe, even better.

I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. I'm pretty firmly in the digital camp and am moving toward the server/client model like lots of others here, so my intent is to use my SD Transporter (which I don't own yet, but soon will!) for 99% of my listening, even the serious stuff. But I'll still keep a good CD transport around, if for no other reason than the fact that selecting a CD and dropping it in feels good, as another poster mentioned.

(BTW, I have lots of sources, analog and digital, and I intend to keep them all :-)

The high end transports sound better for two main reasons.
1. Higher end components than most hard drive computers.
2. We want them to because we spend so much money on them. If you get a high end DAC, hook both products up for processing and take a double blinded test I would nearly guarantee no ability to differentiate. MHO.

I had a Fully modded battery loaded SB and did a lot of tests against a Cd transport (Music Hall cd25) and the CD 25 was better eyes closed, eyes opened, sunglasses, etc... I then Changed the Music Hall for a CEC TL1 and Eventually for a Forsell transport...There is no comparison; Transports sound much better than SB.
Check this from a the www Lampizator dot eu site:

Digital cables conduct digital signal.
Not quite true. There is no digital signal in electricity. It is as analogue as it gets. zeros and ones come out of CD disk but after becoming electricity it is no longer a square wave 44 kHz but high frequency sine wave going out of transport to dac. It carries musical information mathematically embedded in this sine, but the cable conducts analog electrical wave form just like any other.
Knowing the physics of high frequency electricity, more like radio-wave propagation, we can have a good cable with matching electromagnetic impedance, low losses, low reflections, good screening, and minimal signal distortion. That makes this cable "good". But it is not "only digital" signal, and it is not that zeros and ones are zeros and ones, no matter what cable.

Lampizator site myths