Pssst, letting you in on a little secret: You Don't Need a CD Player!

[Mike Anderson]

People are constantly asking for advice in these forums about what CD player to get. I understand lots of people really want the particular functionality of a CD player, but a lot of people don't realize this point:

If you put your music on a computer, you can get far better sound quality and convenience at a fraction of the price! For anyone shopping for CD players, you *really* ought to consider this option.

I honestly can't remember the last time I powered up my CD player. I'll never go back. It's completely outdated.

I suppose this thread is more apropos to the computer audio section, but hardly anyone reads it -- particularly someone who doesn't yet realize they can completely bypass the CD player altogether.

[Feanor]

People are constantly asking for advice in these forums about what CD player to get. I understand lots of people really want the particular functionality of a CD player, but a lot of people don't realize this point:

If you put your music on a computer, you can get far better sound quality and convenience at a fraction of the price! For anyone shopping for CD players, you *really* ought to consider this option.

I honestly can't remember the last time I powered up my CD player. I'll never go back. It's completely outdated.

I suppose this thread is more apropos to the computer audio section, but hardly anyone reads it -- particularly someone who doesn't yet realize they can completely bypass the CD player altogether.

Of course I totally agree. Really, I'm looking forward to the day when all functionality except final amplification is handed by standard computers and sound cards.

And that day is already here for people with the interest and expertise to pull together such a system. The foobar program has plug-ins that will handle crossovers and equalization and also interface with suitable, multichannel sound cards. I just lack the time and patience to get into this, but more integrated, simpler to uses software will eventually come about.

But wait!! Why isn't it here already? Simple: the high-end business model is to sell the audiophile expensive, high mark-up hardware. And audiophiles remain equipment aficionados in general.

[kexodusc]

I just bought 2 new soundcards for my new and old PC's....hooked em' up briefly, but I have to admit, they sound pretty darn good...and that's just WMA and MP3 and decent bit rates. I tried this a few years ago, maybe 2001 or so back and it was pretty terrible. So I don't know if the MP3 and WMA compression algorithm improvments have been that dramatic, or the soundcards are just way, better (I suspect both)...it's at least as good as XM radio or whatever.

Haven't actually tried a CD in them yet, so I can't comment on that, but I expect they'd sound more than good enough for most people.

I'm in agreement...as compression techniques continue to improve, higher rez formats emerge, and storage capacity grows, the home PC is definitely going to becom a piece of the audio rig.

[Feanor]

....

Haven't actually tried a CD in them yet, so I can't comment on that, but I expect they'd sound more than good enough for most people.

I'm in agreement...as compression techniques continue to improve, higher rez formats emerge, and storage capacity grows, the home PC is definitely going to becom a piece of the audio rig.

Kex, m'man, no need to wait for improvements. It's all here, now. I really can't tell the difference between Apple Lossless played on iTunes throught my M-Audio Audiophile USB, and the real thing thru my CDP. (Granted, no part of my system is really high-end.)

And there's nothing to keep a person from using WAV format files, the native CD format; a 300 GB hard disk costs $120 and will hold >400 CD-equivalents in that format.

[N. Abstentia]

Interesting. How do you remotely control it from the couch?

[Feanor]

Interesting. How do you remotely control it from the couch?

My laptop running iTunes sits, you guessed it, on my lap or be side me. It's connected to a USB hub using a 15' cable that is connected to my Audiophile USB and 200 GB hard disk holding my music files; they are located with the rest of my system. Gads! couldn't be easier or simpler.

[kexodusc]

Interesting. How do you remotely control it from the couch?

That's the only drawback in the setup I'm putting together...But realistically, my receiver's remote controls the volume etc, and track flipping/disc switching aren't something I'd do if I'm running off the PC anyway. For some that will matter, not so much me. I usually listen to albums, not songs - for albums, I'll use my cd player, but for the times I do just want music in the house I'll use the computer. Then it's more for background music in the house, so I just set it on a playlist and use the random feature...

In my setup, the computer will output to the TV, and I'll have my wireless mouse near the couch actually...guess that's as close as I can get it. I'm sure someone will invent a remote setup for soundcards etc, if there isn't one already.

[Florian]

I am sorry, but this is silly. Maybe in a sub 400$ range, but a good dedicated CD player will run circles around a computer setup. Even if you dont compress it!

[kexodusc]

I am sorry, but this is silly. Maybe in a sub 400$ range, but a good dedicated CD player will run circles around a computer setup. Even if you dont compress it!

If you use a digital output to a quality DAC, how so?

[Florian]

If you use a digital output to a quality DAC, how so?

First its the ripping which you will loose information on. Then the encoding, and the Jitter thats not removed. You can hear certain section of the electronics inside the computer or the laptop through the sound card and you have voltage fluctuations.

There is most likely a whole range for and against it, but the simple fact is that you can hear it. We ran music from a Apple Ibook to a TagMcLaren Preamp here and while it was practical it did suffer in resolution, harmonic correctness and texture. Now given, you could possibly hear it on the Maggies, but it will be very obvious on Apogees, Magnepans and Electrostatics.

-Flo

PS: I am willing to do a blind test!

[Mike Anderson]

Interesting. How do you remotely control it from the couch?

With this thing:

http://www.slimdevices.com/index.html

[bonsaiguitar]

Interesting. How do you remotely control it from the couch?

I use a dell wireless mouse and keyboard with my laptop connected to the plasma and receiver. Dual tap kegerator on the left right next to the kitchen. Now all I need is a porta potty.

[shokhead]

Computers and A/V are seperate in my home. Why somebody would watch a movie on the computer or use it as part of a home theather is by me. Guess i'm old school when it come to this.

[JohnMichael]

Computers and A/V are seperate in my home. Why somebody would watch a movie on the computer or use it as part of a home theather is by me. Guess i'm old school when it come to this.

Shokhead I guess I am very old school. Two channel stereo in the living room, TV in the bedroom and my computer will have nothing to do with either one.

[Mike Anderson]

Here's my setup, BTW:

1) Music is all stored in lossless format (FLAC) on a 500-GB external drive.

2) The music can be managed with any number of software setups (like iTunes, if you aren't using FLAC), but I'm OK using the Slimserver software that comes free with the Squeezebox I linked to above. That can be accessed from any computer that's on the network, or you can use a remote control to control it through the Squeezebox. You can have any number of these things throughout your house, hooked wirelessly to your network if you like.

3) The computer sends a network signal to the Squeezebox, which outputs a 44.1/16 bit PCM stream to a DAC. My Squeezebox is hooked to the computer via CAT5 cable, but wireless is also an option.

4) In my case, I'm using a Benchmark DAC1, which puts jitter at a below-audible level. Of course this makes the setup slightly more expensive, but then I'm getting sound quality that will rival a CD player many times more expensive than this.

5) The Benchmark outputs the analog signal to my Pathos Logos amp via balanced XLR cables.

That's it! I can control my music without touching a computer, via the Squeezebox. Or, I can use the laptop that's often sitting right in my lap, if I prefer.

The other nice part about it is that the Squeezebox makes Internet radio extremely convenient. You can even access it without having your computer on, via the Squeezenetwork. And through this setup, Internet radio actually sounds pretty good (about as good as you can make a 128k signal sound, which is good enough to fool most people).

[Feanor]

Here's my setup, BTW:
...

Mine is really simple & managable ...

http://gallery.audioreview.com/showp...sort=1&cat=all

The M-Audio Audiophile USB:

[Wireworm5]

There is one exception to this that I am aware of, that is copy protected cd's. Fortunately I only have a few, but if you burn a copy to a cd-r and I assume tranfer to PC you won't get the sound quality that is on the original cd. I found this out the other day, I was playing a burned copy and it had some skips that was annoying me to the point that I pulled out the original cd. I was immediately aware of how much better this cd sounded then the cd-r. So with some copy protected cd's you have to play them in a standalone cd player.

[Woochifer]

Very interesting thread with a lot to think about. With the growth in distributed music servers, I never really thought much of it simply because those devices have only been feasible by converting and compressing the music files due to their comparatively limited storage space.

Now that 500 GB SATA drives are going for less than $200, you're probably right that the time has arrived to start thinking of the computer as a viable music storage and management system, because with that amount of storage, it's now possible to store a large music collection using lossless encoding. I'd be curious as to how this would work with a wireless network because my desktop computer is nowhere near my audio system, and if I have to run CAT5 cabling then I'd rather stick with loading up my CD changer. For one thing, I already own a CD player and keep my CD collection in the same room with my audio system.

I know that the market is headed towards greater convergence between the PC and home entertainment worlds, but the thing that I like about having a standalone audio system is the simplicity and reliability. A CD player or a receiver will simply power up and you're ready to go -- no operating system to go through, no network security patches, no blue screens, etc. And as Joe already mentioned, if a hard drive goes kaput, there goes the music collection (and RAID or other backup configurations add cost). If you have the CDs in your collection, you don't have to worry about losing your music if the CD player breaks, or re-encoding everything if the hard drive fails.

The other factor that would keep me from getting rid of my CD player altogether is that I play SACDs, which have copy protection. Someone else already mentioned the copy protection schemes built into some CDs that prevent them from playing on CD-ROM drives.

Still though, you're bringing up some good points and a lot of ideas that I hadn't thought about yet. The weak link with sound cards has always been the analog circuitry, and using an external DAC gets around this issue.

[Mike Anderson]

Still though, you're bringing up some good points and a lot of ideas that I hadn't thought about yet. The weak link with sound cards has always been the analog circuitry, and using an external DAC gets around this issue.

Wooch, you (and for that matter, anyone else nearby) are welcomed to come check out my setup.

As far as wireless, the Squeezebox works wirelessly. (And if you have an Apple setup, so does the Airport Extreme, but you have to control the music from your computer, whereas the SB has a remote control.)

I will say that because the SB is cutting edge technology, it helps to be computer savvy to get the most out of it and have it working 100% smoothly. A small but non-negligible minority of people do experience problems getting it to work wirelessly. (There's a review of it on this site that details such problems.)

What's very cool is the whole community of fanatics, engineers and computer geeks that have sprung up around the thing. The code for the server is open-source, so people create all these crazy plugins that let you do dozens of different things with the SB:

http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.cgi?SlimServerPlugins

[superpanavision70mm]

Well, I don't have much to add to this particular thread other than this...

At least CD players don't get viruses like a PC....Apple for me all the way, but never for serious music playback.

[Florian]

LOL....I have ZERO problems with my Windows box :-) Did you cheap out on the hardware and ram? ;-)

But i still use my CDP and TT

[ericl]

Florian,

What type of PC Audio hardware did you use to come to the conclusion that pc audio is inferior? as you know, it is key. internal soundcards won't do it. There are many USB-DACs starting to come out (you might try wavelength audio's brick). There are also high options for converting USB to SP/DIF for use with your own DAC (empirical audio - heard incredible resolution at his display at CES ).

Also, you have to bypass window's kmixer for best sound. This requires special hardware and drivers, not available with typical soundcards...

[Florian]

Aaah, this is getting tiresome. As soon as someone doesnt agree with others it is talked to death. Everyone ignores the experience that Joe and I had, that just the xchange of CD Transports transformed the sound. If changing from a Krell KP20T to a Goldmund CD36 had a very audible difference in sound, and all they do is read 0 and 1's then something is going on!

We used the Tag McLaren AVR32 with 192khz dacs. The Apple Ibook ran the wireless connection to a MC Airport and then digitally straight into the Tag McLaren. That Tag is way above any preamp used by our members with PC based audio storage. The CD where ripped in pure uncompressed format. We used CDex for the Job and then compared them to normal CD's using the VRDS T-1 Transport also into the Tag McLaren.

The difference was obvious in the soundstage depth, micro details and harmonic correctness. Something simply didnt sound right. Speakers used where Apogee Scinitllas. Arguably one of the absolut highest resolution speaker on this planet.

-Flo

[ericl]

Aaah, this is getting tiresome. As soon as someone doesnt agree with others it is talked to death. Everyone ignores the experience that Joe and I had, that just the xchange of CD Transports transformed the sound. If changing from a Krell KP20T to a Goldmund CD36 had a very audible difference in sound, and all they do is read 0 and 1's then something is going on!

We used the Tag McLaren AVR32 with 192khz dacs. The Apple Ibook ran the wireless connection to a MC Airport and then digitally straight into the Tag McLaren. That Tag is way above any preamp used by our members with PC based audio storage. The CD where ripped in pure uncompressed format. We used CDex for the Job and then compared them to normal CD's using the VRDS T-1 Transport also into the Tag McLaren.

The difference was obvious in the soundstage depth, micro details and harmonic correctness. Something simply didnt sound right. Speakers used where Apogee Scinitllas.

-Flo

So you're comparing an unmodified, $129 airport express to a Krell transport?? Sure, those are very comparable products.

[Florian]

So you're comparing an unmodified, $129 airport express to a Krell transport?? Sure, those are very comparable products.

No, you and the others are comparing it. I said right from the start that these are not compareable, not price wise and performance wiese either. But you guys cant accept that and argue with me that this SB is soo good that i can forget my CDP.

And that is simply wrong!