"Heinz Kiosk" wrote in message


OK, this begs another question. I can put together a silent-ish PC
with the AP2496 for well under £1000, probably around £800 with a big
enough HD to store 400-500 lossless CDs. You have compiled technical
evidence that implies that for listening to CD originated music this
source cannot be *meaningfully* bettered for consumer purposes (I
think, correct me if I am misunderstanding you).

That's pretty much it.

Why, therefore, would any consumer pay more than this for a home CD
replay system. eg
From memory the Linn CD12 retails for around £12,000 and presumably
the people who buy it are happy with the value-for-money when they
listen to the music.

....not a lot of people.

What sonic advantage is the purchasor of such a system gaining?

The issue of computers as audio front ends has been discussed here many
times.

As I said, not a lot of people buy $10,000+ CD players. Non-audio factors
such as appearance, adulation in the press, pride of ownership no doubt are
part of their perceived value. Comared to mid-fi CD players in the $150-300
range, many would argue that there never was any sonic advantage or even
sonic difference.

Computer audio front-ends have plusses and minuses. If you compare the $1000
HTPC to comparable DVD players, you find that the DVD player generally costs
a lot less. Traditional audio players play media directly, so you don't have
to spend a lot of time ripping CDs to load their hard drives.

Are these high end systems introducing deliberate
"euphonic distortion" that makes the music sound better? Or what?

I don't think that high end optical disc players have ever been found to
have sonic advantages over good mid-fi players in time-synched,
level-matched, bias-controlled listening tests. The best that can be said
for the sound of the computer-based player is that it sounds pretty much the
same.

People either perceive the computer juke box concept as being a plus or a
minus. For the most part the SOTA in juke box type players has passed to the
portable players, which have roughly equal sound quality, at least out to
their output jacks.