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Can best optical player rival best computer source

I know there are better and worse computer based music servers as well as universal players and transports feeding dacs. There are now many players with digital inputs. My question is best versus best. Optical readers have to read and move on. Ripping to a hard drive can use software that repeatedly tries to get a good read.

Can the best player rival the best computer source?
tbg
audiofreak32's avatar
audiofreak32
281 posts
 
Using a LINN Akurate with WAV and FLAC files (24/192) ripped from dbPoweramp, you will be very, very hard pressed to beat this sound from ANY cd player made. It would be in the 10's of thousands at least in order to even start to compare.
robbob
273 posts
 
Just two months ago I would have said that computer based audio was a notch behind the better CD players. After adding a mac/Rega DAC to my system and hearing some other systems I've learned that the CDP is now a notch below. On average they are on par, but the server puts your entire music collection at your fingertips. It's a very seductive and I find I listen to more music now than ever before.

And that last item is the best reason why CDP's will slowly vanish. It's about the music first.

Cheers,

Rob
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
Yes, but the CD player cannot be a conventional design. It must essentially be a computer with CDROM disk that reads CD's at high-speed, converts them to .wav files and then spools the data out of RAM.

The design must obviously incorporate a low-jitter master clock and the implementation must be done by an expert.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
david12
1,454 posts
 
Tbg I agree with you, I am not advocating buying any of the expensive players, I can't afford them either. The point was that the consensus I have picked up, is that discless digital is'nt yet up to competing with the very best disc players. It is progressing so fast, it may reach that level in the next few years
tbg OP
5,263 posts
 
David12, I am on my third computer server. The first was a Window unit with Exact Copy and Foobar. It was a pain and so so relative to my Exemplar/Oppo BDP-83 not SE. Second I bought a Weiss Dac202 and an Apple PowerBook Pro with a SSD drive and played Amarra and then Pure Music. This was much better. Finally I got the modified Apple Mini tied with eSATA to a TuneBank raid hard drive and special software for ripping. It also has a TEAC optical drive for ripping. It is designed to work with the Weiss Dac202. This was much better and clearly better than any optical player I have heard. But I have yet to hear the Exemplar/Oppo BDP-95.
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