The Dirty Little Secret
Somewhere out there, in the blogo-sphere, folks are muttering something about the CD is dead or about to die, because the computer is taking over. The disrupter (computer) claims ease of storage, ease of use, quick retrieval, etc Sounds inviting....Selling CD players, DACs and USB DACs, yours truly feels qualified to opine.
The dirty little secret is that sonically, the computer paradigm is not flushed out yet. While there is no doubt to their convenience, loading a CD or downloading music while it seems simple, can sonically be a nightmare.
There are so many aspects of this that can make a difference. USB or sound card? FLAC, loss less or none? EAC or copy? Replace ASIO driver or not? Or the uninformed, "Let me upsample these puppies to 3 Mega hertz".... "This uses a newer chip" ......I could go on....
What we have here, in cool hand Luke terms, is a failure to communicate. If you thought that cartridge alignment, tone arm, turn table, cartridge cable, phono preamp et. al. was a lot to swallow and understand, sister/brother, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Ripping music to a computer; simple. Watching someone spend all that time just to get frustrated during play back; priceless.
Stay tuned to my blog as start a foray into computer playback..... right now, its the dirty little secret of high end audio.
Vic Trola's audio blog to comment on comments and review equipment for The Pacific Valve & Electric Company. ** I am on staff here at Pacific Valve & Electric Company - take my comments for what they are worth. **
4 comments:
For years I've been using the Slim Devices (now part of Logitech) Squeezebox. Ripped all my CDs to pc, losslessly compressed with FLAC.
It ROCKS!
The easy of use is awesome. All your music at your fingertips. As for audio quality, I can't tell the difference between the SB2 as a digital fromt-end, or my TEAC vrds. Except I don't have to juggle CDs anymore...
I truly believe (and I work in IT for a living) that digital stream players (or similar) will be the way to go for an ultimately better performance than 'any' CD and laser mechanism implementation. One of the main reasons for this is the fact you do not need a complicated hi-end transport with the dependence on an accurate focusing laser, nor do you incur static build-up issues from the polycarbonate format itself, and all the other shakes associated with the CD transport.
So therefore, no need for the ultra-expensive Teac like CD transports any more - or any transport for that matter - when the 1's and 0's are either stored locally on a solid state hard disk or arrive via CAT 5 network cable then decently buffered on the DS player. Obviously I am in the fortunate position of being able to easily network up these sorts of devices - but when you know how - the end result due to the absence and limitations of a CD transport mechanism are now no more!! You can now concentrate on the DAC - and perhaps put a tube output stage on one. Perfect!!! And not forgetting the reliability issue with no moving parts :).
Phew, all those years of trying to make the transport work perfectly with all those costs gone - let's put all that excess money into the DAC now.
Hi Vic
Any chance you will be reviewing the Shuguang S8? I am curious about how it compares to the Doge 6, in your opinion.
Sorry, I meant Doge 6130, but I am sure you knew what I meant... Thanks.
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