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Are Disc Players Dead?

How important is a disc player anymore? I think that stand alone DAC's have far eclipsed the stand alone disc player in importance over the last 3 years with the rise of server based music.

Only an SACD really needs a disc player anymore. In what instance can you get better sound from a disc player than when you download the music, CD or HiRez, then play it back through a new stand alone DAC with the latest technology?

I really only use my very humble disc player to watch movies that I own now. I download most movies to rent through AppleTV, and if I buy a CD (rare) I download it to the server, where it takes up residence in iTunes for playback in AIFF format.

So, disc players on their deathbed, as DAC move to the top of the digital mountain?

I say yes.
macdadtexas
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,426 posts
 
Abucktwoeighty, It is not time consuming at all. Instead of putting CD int CDP insert it into computer and play while you rip. Do only disk that you listen to and eventually you'll go thru all of them.
abucktwoeighty's avatar
abucktwoeighty
1,079 posts
 
LP's are another story...
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,426 posts
 
"LP's are another story..." - that's true, and it has to be done right. Early digitized music was A/D converted using jittery clock. This jitter appears as noise and cannot be removed ever. The only remedy is to A/D it again if analog master still exist. Good A/D hardware might be pricey.
ghosthouse's avatar
ghosthouse
4,306 posts
 
No, not yet...and oh, by the way, please - I'd like one of everything else too.
dhl93449
455 posts
 
Kijanki:

I have not had a hard drive fail either, but I use very expensive SCSI drives for my servers. The popular and cheap SATA drives have a poor reliability record. Just look at the selection of reviews on NewEgg for any of them.

Even though I have not had a drive failure, migrating data from older SCSI drives is still a major pain. Newer drives are much faster and have different connectors, so getting data off an older SCSI drive is problematic from a system integration point of view. And I did have a lot of data stored on Jazz media, now you cannot find a playback/read device for these unless you get some used junk off EBay.

I have not heard of any media that has a real, proven 100 year lifespan. You are luckiy if you can get most consumer burned media to play back properly in more than one playback device.

Online backups are an option but even the fastest wideband is gonna take quite a while to download 1 Terabyte in data.
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