Is this the END of DAYS for the high end CD player

Lewinskih01,
Thanks for the great recommendation to read "Computer Audiophile CD Ripping Strategy and Methodology" (found at www.computeraudiophile)
For anyone interested on ripping their CD library onto a hard drive this is essential reading and will save you much time in the future. I wish that I had found it earlier.

The end is near... no actually it is already here.

I moved to a Apple computer about 5 years ago (they have toslink stock), at the time I A/B it with a number of good (not great) CD players.... I no longer even own a CD player.

I use a DAC1-HDR as my DAC.

There will always be a market for hi end cd players. Ripping a CD to a hard drive on a computer is different than playing the same cd on a high end cd player. In effect, you are using the DVD drive on a computer as your transport and not all cd transports are the same.

Hi end cd players, not all, but some like Burmester's cd players, have modified cd drive mechanisms that minimize mechanical vibration and interference to ensure that the laser picks up every bit of information accurately and completely. That would yield more information being fed to DAC. That in turn gives music more nuance, atmosphere, air/space and etc.

For example, I have burmester 061. the same WAV file that I ripped to my computer and using 061's DAC still sounds inferior than the same CD that plays through the 061.

However, you will need a hi end DAC to hear the difference.

Next time... What you can try is.... Using a regular cd player and outputs its signal to burmest's mighty 069, then listen to the same cd on the 069. You will realize hi end cd player will be around.

Unless someone makes an audiophile computer that has a very good cd mechinism... On top of that, figure a way to minimize electrical, signal, and noise interference,signal crosstalk, EMI within all the components in the computer.... Than maybe a computer can sound as good as a hi end cd player. Oh and if the hard drive is very fragmented and the file is all over the hard drive..... Can we say jitter?

It is over. RIP CD players and CDs. You served us well in the end.

Did anyone actually try the original CD destruction tests? I seem to remember the adverts smearing CDs with jam or hitting them with a hammer then playing them. Oh the 1980s... Must have had great error correction back then!

I guess the next test will be to see how many thousand years in landfill sites it will take to decompose.

Wayneker, the CD drive in a computer is capable of retrieving the data on a CD perfectly. Not close to perfectly. Perfectly. Anything less, like a single bit out of place, and the OS you just loaded could be useless. While you can elect to bypass the error correction when ripping CDs, it isn't advisable. It is only within the software, where the data is converted from one representation to another, or in playback, that differences can arise.

And fragmentation has nothing to do with jitter. A modern disk drive can deliver data to memory far, far faster than is required for audio playback, no matter how the data is distributed. Again, the process results in perfect transfer -- not a single bit is allowed to be misplaced as it is lined up in memory.

As to noise, crosstalk, EMI, etc., they apply equally to a CD player. While it may be some time before someone creates a special purpose computer optimized for audio, the current general purpose ones are doing a pretty good job. Pro audio is almost completely computerized at this point. Long before you buy them, the music on your CDs has been through more computers than you can shake a stick at.