Music from hard drive better than CD?

Good thread. This is also what I wanted to achieve. Thanks.

Rsbeck,
have you evaluated the G4 with a spdif output into the EMM?

i am curious to know if better results can be obtained using a PC HD based transport as a source for a good audio DAC like my Wadia.

AudioEng,
curious to know which transports you aare comparing the PC to (not everyone's idea of high end is the same). would a HD and USB to SPDIF converter outperform or compete with something like a dCS Verdi?

I'm about to delve into this stuff as well so am very interested in this thread. From what I understand you can run your lossless digital file (WAV or AIFF) from your hard drive via a USB to SPDIF convertor into virtually any DAC with an S/PDIF input. Assuming it was recorded as a lossless file at the appropriate sample rate (or greater), it would seem to me that the quality of the output signal will then be solely dependent upon the DAC and not at all on the hard drive. Am I incorrect in assuming this? By the way, You could further convert the signal from S/PDIF to Toslink with yet another simple converter if your DAC only has a Toslink input. All these converters are available through RAM Electronics, or some other favorite electronics retailer or etailer. I would like to put the most listened-to part of my CD collection on an external drive that I can bring from home to work. Anyone figure out how big a drive you'd need to hold, say, 200 CD's as WAV files? Are those files indeed "lossless"?

Marco

Using WAV, you'd need about 80 gigs for 200 CD's. I've been told that some of these lossless codecs take about half as much space. If that's true, then you'd need 40 Gigs for 200 CD's.

I have not tried the Hard Drive with SPDiF into the Emm Labs Dac. I'm not sure the Emm Labs DAC will take an SPDiF input. I use the Emm Labs in a different room from the Hard Drive/Apogee.