Why CD players will never be dead

"I remember reading a review over at 6moons.com about how the reading of a disk and transfer to the DAC, in a CDP, is still an analog (mechanical) function or something to that effect. Its not really digital until the conversion.”

It can’t be called analog because the disc being read is digitally encoded. What would make sense to me is if 6moons compared the inherent irregularities of the mechanical function of a CDP to those of an analog playback system.

Now that I've had some time to think about it the article at 6moons went on to state that the pits in the CD are read by the laser similar to a needle tracking a groove on a record. Its still not a 'digital' read as the laser never really reads the same pits in the same manner, or something like that. There is still some guess work done before it goes onto the DAC. I'll try to find the article and post it here.

All the best,
Nonoise

Nonoise, regardless of the details in the article, you’re right about the ripping process being bit-perfect while the transport read is not and is reliant on error correction.

It took a bit but here is the article; http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/psaudio7/perfectwave.html

Hope this helps. I'm re-reading it myself.

All the best,
Nonoise

Would someone care to weigh in on the PSAudio Perfect Wave memory player? It may not be better than computer audio files that never touched a disc, but I've found it to be equal to anything ripped from a disc and then fed to a DAC. Here's why: The PW player uploads the data from a disc into a buffer and then the data is transmitted bit perfect to the PW DAC via an I2S interface.