Is computer audio a bust?

Audiolabyrinth - I was a design team lead on the Pentium 2 many years ago. It was a "slot 1" processor.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

07-19-14: Bhobba
The improved SQ has to do with reduced jitter which is easier to accomplish without the moving parts of a mechanical transport being involved.

The real value of computer audio is not that is SQ is inherently better - transports can sound as good - but its rare - its the paradigm shift it engenders of being able to tap into you entire music library from your litening position with something like an iPad.

Agreed....

07-19-14: Electroslacker
That said, a quality USB cable can do a phenomenal job of delivering a digital stream from a computer to a DAC, where the final quality and subjective preference is determined by the chosen DAC.

slacker, what cable do u use? I am in the process of researching one....

Joecasey, There is some world class transports out there that computer audio cannot touch period, if computer audio could, then this is the biggest fleasing in american history of audio!, look at DCS for an example, LOL!, to get this straight here, I am saying transports, Dacs, cd-players are all in the same catorgory, that is NOT computer audio, though I agree, cd-players,dacs, transports are computers, no doubt, however, they are dedicated to audio!

I would say that Computer Audio is definitely not a bust, with friends that I know from various age groups, people under 30 only use CA and probably don't have a CDP and never intend to buy one, it's not until you hit higher age groups where you find people reluctant to make the switch, or even try it. I have been playing with CA since about 1998 and completely removed my CDP from my system sometime around 2006. I would not even think of putting a CDP back in the system at this point. All music is in FLAC on a NAS drive over wired Ethernet to a small mini pc that plays the music over async USB to a galvanically isolated DAC that goes to my preamp. It sounds very good, I have pretty good analog setup and am very capable of making good hires vinyl transfers. The vinyl rips sound identical to the analog on my setup so I know that the CA is working right in my system.

Ripping and tagging, once you get the hang of it is remarkably easy to do. Organizing classical music is fine, you just need to settle on a way to organize it and stick to it.

The whole not doing Computer Audio is really just a generational thing, like it or not it is the future.