Why CD players will never be dead

Shakeydeal, his mods vary and mine is the latest with the battery power supply and all (modified last year). Tell me about yours? Love to know how (what program) you use to rip CD's? I have not had as much luck as you getting computer audio to sound as good. I also use the Squeezebox Touch and a good Bel Canto DAC? No way it sounds as good. I stream wireless to the SB Touch however.

This is the issue I have with computer based audio. So many ways to cobble out the final sound that perhaps I could be doing SOMETHING better? That something is confusing and a royal pain to me....

Granny wrote: "My computer audio front end and others I have heard do not sound as good as a great CD/SACD player in my experience."

You just need to buy the right computer interface. There is no reason why it should not beat both your CD player and your vinyl.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Yes, I must buy the right one and every other step in this whole process must also be sorted out and done the best way possible. I swear it is this bottomless black hole of cobbled together computer audio with all of its twists and turns that confounds me. One says I need a better dac, another says I need to rip with this other program, and yet another says I need to store in this format on this device. On and on and on...

I guess I am doing something wrong or not the optimal way it seems. My $1500 CD cannot sound better I am told, but is does so what now? I so want to like computer based audio and use my CD player as my 2nd choice as I love the convenience of playing my music on a computer. Thus far I have not heard better sound then my CD player however. I won't spend $5000 either, no more than $1500.

hi steve:

are you so confident that you would make a wager that i would prefer your digital front end, over my favorite cd player ??

Grannyring,

What's the rush? Wait another year or two and you'll be able to get something easy-to-use and fantastic for your $1500. The pace of improvement is like lightning right now. A huge investment in computer audio right now will likely result in disappointment later. The reason you get so many conflicting opinions about what works is that people are just now figuring some of this out.. We're still in BETA (at least in terms of user- friendliness) when it comes to computer audio. Just my two cents.