Mizuno - you are getting some excellent advice.
I want to make sure that you are clear that using a hard drive as a transport instead of a CDP is somewhat of a game changer in terms of what it requires of a DAC.
Eliminating the problems associated with a 35-40 year old electro-optical-mechanical spec is not a trivial thing. When you are ripping to disc the drive is simply reading bits - something computers do everyday, all day long generally correctly.
When you are playing back from a hard drive once again all you are reading is bits. So many of the artifacts that are associated with real time playback - especially jitter - largely disappear.
While I am not an engineer, I am convinced that most of the money in top of the line CDPs and DACs has historically gone to dealing with problems associated with real time and also with SPDIF implementation.
While it is not perfect, this is a giant step forward.
I want to make sure that you are clear that using a hard drive as a transport instead of a CDP is somewhat of a game changer in terms of what it requires of a DAC.
Eliminating the problems associated with a 35-40 year old electro-optical-mechanical spec is not a trivial thing. When you are ripping to disc the drive is simply reading bits - something computers do everyday, all day long generally correctly.
When you are playing back from a hard drive once again all you are reading is bits. So many of the artifacts that are associated with real time playback - especially jitter - largely disappear.
While I am not an engineer, I am convinced that most of the money in top of the line CDPs and DACs has historically gone to dealing with problems associated with real time and also with SPDIF implementation.
While it is not perfect, this is a giant step forward.