The CD player is dead.......

Mlsstl - You're right. Nothing is 100% safe. I also know that backup Hard Disks tend not to fail when they are not powered. I have two backups - total of 3 1TB drives. Each costs $99 and is dead silent (no fan, heavy metal case). Somebody mentioned 5 hard disk crashes in 4 years. I had 4 PCs in last 23 years at work with no failure.

Quality of computer drive doesn't matter (many CDPs have standard Phillips CDM12 computer drive anyway). CDP has to read data in real time and cannot fail when sector is not readable. Tiniest scratch along the disk longer than 0.1" (4000 bits) makes disk unreadable. Because of that CD uses instead of regular Reed Solomon error correction code Cross Interleaved Reed Solomon that INTERPOLATES incorrect data. My computer program MAX rips CDs as data going hundreds of times to the same sector, if necessary, to get proper checksum. Once I get this on the hard drive quality never changes while CD is getting more scratches and interpolation. Is it (interpolation) audible - not to me. Amount of improvement is most likely not very significant (if any) but it is not worse than CDP.

Tvad wrote: "Theft, house fires and windstorms all apply equally to downloaded files stored on equipment on one's home."

Yes, but I keep one of backups at work. It would be pretty difficult to make copies of 2000 CDs and keep them at different location.

My main objective was to find out why people prefer cd players over a computer/dac combo.

I'm surprised that as far as I can see no one has yet mentioned the jitter issues that can arise with interfaces between dacs and spdif or aes/ebu or usb outputs, but which do not arise with a competently designed one-box player.

Certainly those issues can be and frequently are overcome, but not without some combination of luck; trial and error; careful selection of components, jitter rejection technology, cables, connector types, and even cable length; and in many cases added expense as well.

Obviously there are many other factors which will result in a one-box approach not being the right solution for many people, but the jitter issue would certainly seem like something that should be a significant consideration in the tradeoffs.

Regards,
-- Al

What if the CD player is cryoed?

For sure music file server devices that are also user friendly will become increasingly prevalent and popular as the technology matures.

So far, you can do it yourself which is less expensive but still significantly complex to do well and in a fail safe manner or buy more expensive integrated solutions that cost more and still may not have all the common user glitches worked out

If you can touch it you can feel it. Tom