Will computer to DAC replace transports and cdp's?


From my limited reading it seems that a cd burned to a hard drive will be a bit for bit copy because of the software programs used to rip music files. A transport has to get it right the first time and feed the info to a dac. Wavelength audio has some interesting articles about computer based systems and have made a strong statement that a transport will never be able to compete with a hard drive>dac combo.

Anybody care to share their thoughts?
kublakhan

Showing 5 responses by hi5harry

I moved to computer audio 3 years ago and it is FUN. I sit in my listening chair and with my wireless mouse, can pull up any cd in 5 seconds! My kids are starting to enjoy the old rock/ blues cd's, so when I find a cd case, it rarely has the right cd(or any cd) in the case). Not the end of the world anymore, because I never use them.
Next big plus is I have a friend who gets music bootlegs that never made it to the recording studio. I import these on my hard drive and am blown away by the raw live recordings we would never hear otherwise.
Last, I have some recordings made from vinyl recorded at 24/96 that are really stunning. Some were made by me, but some were made with a friends analog system with a Colibri cartridge based system , with pristine albums. The sound of those special recordings is like nothing I have ever heard in my system.
I use Adobe Audition, only burn in wave files, sent out thru the USB port by the amazing Empirical Audio Off Ramp Turbo to a TRL modified Audiomeca Enkianthus X dac.
Hope this helps anyone sitting on the fence. Digital has finally found it's true potential in my system.
It's a pc with two Seagate hard drives, Windows XP pro,I use Adobe Audition to list the music and show the wave files. The Empirical Audio off ramp turbo uses an M audio Transit out the USB port (5 meters is the limit) to a black box containing the guts of the off ramp turbo (mine is powered by an ac plug (or a battery for critical listening). That is pig tailed to a 3 inch wire to rca plug to my Dac that recognized anything up to 24/96. I am not very computer savy, so I hope this is what your are asking. I also have a lynx 2 soundcard in it I am not really using anymore, but I had a digital breakout box that connected to a Rca digital cable into my dac before the Off Ramp
I bought my off ramp turbo used for $750. and sold two digital cables for $700. So it wasn't too bad. It did make over 500 cd's sound MUCH better and I needed to play all the vinyl I ripped at 24/96 (my linx won't pass 24/96 out digitally).
We Audiogoner's know we are on the lunatic fringe( $1000.00 for a power cable or $500.00 in chemicals to make a 16/44 cd sound better???)
I have no affiliation with Empirical Audio, just trying to save some people from not getting the most out of there computer audio. Hey Tvad, Corvette convertible( All tricked out) can't use the word "spendy". Just having some fun.
Remember computer transports aren't limited to 16/44, spin at a much higher speed than cd transports, don't loose any data (computers can't afford to loose data), don't have to have a correction circut to guess what is correct.
They are like stereo's in the fact different power supplys offer different sound . Some control the bass better , some have better midrange etc. You can download a ton of free things, like upsamplers etc.
I have owned a Levinson 37, a CEC tl,a Sony 777, an Ayre d1x and now the Audiomeca Mepisto . I think the computer, with the off ramp turbo may be better in my system. Hope this helps
Hi Jeremy,
Assuming we can burn the info off the cd in a bit perfect manner (many programs can),then what you have is two mediums with the same data. One is a 50 cent piece of plastic that is prone to scratches, in a poor clamped transport that looses data and corrects for it, with some vibration in the horizontal plane. The other is a bearing, platter and read mechanism that is built to strict tolerances, extracts data in a perfect manner, and does not scratch like plastic. They have a lot less vibration because the industry has spent billions in R & D.
We need look no further than phono cartriges. A better phono cartridge extracts the data from the same record better, the data (the record) is the same.
So in the playback of that data, the dac is presented with all the data, in a more perfect manner.
You are probably correct about hi rez as we know it (SACD & DVD_A) won't last . Computer audio has a lot less boundries. 24/96 and 24/192 is fine if you have the hard drive space. Has anyone heard Wilson Audio's master recordings at CES. They are breathtaking!!! Why can't we pay more and get what we really want?