gary
03-08-2008, 11:47
I am completely new to this most interesting recent HiFi development of playing through digital source and the question I have is where does the source material come from to start with.
Surely if it is just ripped from CD you still need a pretty good player to record a good copy onto the computer to start with.
Ok if you have access to the original hi def digitally recorded master I can see where it would be better.
The old anology (crap in - crap out) springs to mind.
I remember playing cds taken from mp3 years ago and while they were ok when taken back to cd format they were never as good as original cds there was always information lost in the process.
If the source material is your own collection of cds ripped to computer then doing so with a cheap transport or worse your computers own cd rom surely introduces errors to the digital image recorded.
And I know it can read it three or four times and try to compensate for errors but that is assuming transport is not making same error every time.
I understand the theory that once you have well recorded digital image then playing it back on PC or Mac should be better as there are less moving parts to deal with ect.
HiFi manufacturers have spent vast amounts of money perfecting good CD transport systems to try and eliminate jitter and other digital playback errors and I find it hard to believe that a £15 cd rom or cheap cd player can achieve the same level of performance.
Surely if it is just ripped from CD you still need a pretty good player to record a good copy onto the computer to start with.
Ok if you have access to the original hi def digitally recorded master I can see where it would be better.
The old anology (crap in - crap out) springs to mind.
I remember playing cds taken from mp3 years ago and while they were ok when taken back to cd format they were never as good as original cds there was always information lost in the process.
If the source material is your own collection of cds ripped to computer then doing so with a cheap transport or worse your computers own cd rom surely introduces errors to the digital image recorded.
And I know it can read it three or four times and try to compensate for errors but that is assuming transport is not making same error every time.
I understand the theory that once you have well recorded digital image then playing it back on PC or Mac should be better as there are less moving parts to deal with ect.
HiFi manufacturers have spent vast amounts of money perfecting good CD transport systems to try and eliminate jitter and other digital playback errors and I find it hard to believe that a £15 cd rom or cheap cd player can achieve the same level of performance.