PC-Audio vs. High-end CD Player-GAME OVER

Sammie: before you dump those CDs, make sure your ripped copies are backed up and that you won't face digital rights management issues in the future. E.g., you may need to the original source disk for some reason.

Congrats on your new purchase. I've been following your posts on getting into PC-based audio. Sounds like you found a winner. If more people experienced hard drive based audio done right, there would be a lot more converts.

I park mine in the next room (quieter) and use a tablet PC as a wireless remote. Never have to leave the couch again to change CDs.

Hatari-USB is limited to around 15 feet, but you can buy extenders that allow longer cables. I use an Opticis 30 meter fiber optic USB cable that converts USB to fiber optic and back again with no degredation in the signal. That way, I can keep the loud PC out of the room.

Personally, I use a 500 GB drive to hold ripped CDs and back it all up to another 500 GB drive in case of a drive failure. The drives are internal drives. Number/size/external/internal is up to you.

After the CDs are ripped to hard drive, there is no need to play them from a CD drive. The music software, like iTunes, reads the album from hard disk (or memory if you load the album into a ramdisk). So, internal/external CD drive is irrelevant in my opinion. CD drive heat during ripping shouldn't be an issue.

If someone brings over a CD to play, I recommend ripping it first to avoid jitter that is introduced from playing from the CD.

EA user here. I use the Turbo-2 (AES/EBU out) with the EmmLabs DCC2 SE. With the right PC setup and EA's battery power supply, PCM is essentially indistinguishable from my CDSD SE. All of my CDs are tucked away in boxes in storage. I use the CDSD only for SACDs, which usually sound better IMO.

The beauty of the EA stuff is you get to use your existing DAC. Looking forward to the Pacecar v3. No experience with I2S or wireless.

Can't help noticing that the "Digital" forum is also "PC Audio" forum now, with few posts in the "PC Audio" forum.

1. Many digital designers would agree that the noisy switching power supply in a PC-based audio can never come even close to a linear power supply, especially if R-Core power transformers are used. A "nice DAC" (or any other “solution”) can not help eliminating the switching power downsides. This includes a Laptop because the battery feeds a switching power supply inside.

Deshapiro's DAC receives a digital stream from the PC via USB. If a fiber optic USB cable is used, the DAC is electrically isolated from the PC. If a reclocker is used in between (e.g., Empirical Audio Pace Car), then the digital signal is reclocked, reducing or eliminating any effects introduced into the digital stream from the PC. This way, PC power supply is not a factor.

Speaking of tried and true audiophile grade DACs, if you have a DAC that you already like, IMO the Empirical Audio Turbo-2 or PaceCar (or both) interface is the way to go. Yes, they're pricey for something that just converts USB to another digital format, but the internal clock makes it pricey. And you don't have to spend money on a DAC.

Shameless promoting by a happy Turbo-2 owner.