Quote Originally Posted by Mike Anderson
My understanding is that when you rip a CD onto your hard drive, there's no "transport" involved, and it never gets converted to PCM stream. A CD drive is not the same thing as a transport.
Yes, all "drives" are transports. And there is a decided difference in the ability of a basic $39 computer drive and better ones like Plextors or significantly enhanced variations found in dedicated players to transcribe the bits. Ever seen a Burmester 969 ? It is built like a tank with the disk secured to the platter via a threaded weight.

The concept of a large capacity digital library is compelling. There are, however, some qualitative issues on the capture end to address with basic computers IMHO.

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