PC based hard disc players seem to be a common topic of discussion in
this ng at the moment
Has anyone any comments on likely sound quality compared to a
standalone CD player?
I'm thinking along the lines of feeding digital audio from a PC
soundcard via optical link to a standalone Musical Fidelity DAC, then
to amp and speakers.
The CDs would be stored on the hard disc as wav files or flac
(lossless compression)
My current CD player is a Marantz CD6000OSE

Gelf

"Gelf" emitted :

PC based hard disc players seem to be a common topic of discussion in
this ng at the moment
Has anyone any comments on likely sound quality compared to a
standalone CD player?
I'm thinking along the lines of feeding digital audio from a PC
soundcard via optical link to a standalone Musical Fidelity DAC, then
to amp and speakers.
The CDs would be stored on the hard disc as wav files or flac
(lossless compression)

http://www.scalatech.co.uk/papers/aes93.pdf

My current CD player is a Marantz CD6000OSE

I have one! Good innit?

Sure is - that's why I'm a bit worried about possibly ending up with
inferior sound quality, for the sake of convenience.

"Gelf" emitted :

PC based hard disc players seem to be a common topic of discussion in
this ng at the moment
Has anyone any comments on likely sound quality compared to a
standalone CD player?
I'm thinking along the lines of feeding digital audio from a PC
soundcard via optical link to a standalone Musical Fidelity DAC, then
to amp and speakers.
The CDs would be stored on the hard disc as wav files or flac
(lossless compression)

http://www.scalatech.co.uk/papers/aes93.pdf

My current CD player is a Marantz CD6000OSE

I have one! Good innit?

Sure is - that's why I'm a bit worried about possibly ending up with
inferior sound quality, for the sake of convenience.

On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 23:27:54 +0000
Gelf wrote:

Has anyone any comments on likely sound quality compared to a
standalone CD player?
I'm thinking along the lines of feeding digital audio from a PC
soundcard via optical link to a standalone Musical Fidelity DAC, then
to amp and speakers.

Most likely you will be playing pack at 48kHz then, so *better* than CD
quality, all other things allowing...


--
Spyros lair: http://www.mnementh.co.uk/ |||| Maintainer: arm26 linux

Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are tasty and good with
ketchup.

On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 23:27:54 +0000
Gelf wrote:

Has anyone any comments on likely sound quality compared to a
standalone CD player?
I'm thinking along the lines of feeding digital audio from a PC
soundcard via optical link to a standalone Musical Fidelity DAC, then
to amp and speakers.

Most likely you will be playing pack at 48kHz then, so *better* than CD
quality, all other things allowing...


--
Spyros lair: http://www.mnementh.co.uk/ |||| Maintainer: arm26 linux

Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are tasty and good with
ketchup.

On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 02:05:12 +0000, Ian Molton wrote:

On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 23:27:54 +0000
Gelf wrote:

Has anyone any comments on likely sound quality compared to a
standalone CD player?
I'm thinking along the lines of feeding digital audio from a PC
soundcard via optical link to a standalone Musical Fidelity DAC, then
to amp and speakers.

Most likely you will be playing pack at 48kHz then, so *better* than CD
quality, all other things allowing...

But most source material is 41k, so doesn't upsampling to 48 hurt the
sound?

--
Jim H jh
@333
.org

On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 02:05:12 +0000, Ian Molton wrote:

On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 23:27:54 +0000
Gelf wrote:

Has anyone any comments on likely sound quality compared to a
standalone CD player?
I'm thinking along the lines of feeding digital audio from a PC
soundcard via optical link to a standalone Musical Fidelity DAC, then
to amp and speakers.

Most likely you will be playing pack at 48kHz then, so *better* than CD
quality, all other things allowing...

But most source material is 41k, so doesn't upsampling to 48 hurt the
sound?

--
Jim H jh
@333
.org

On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 02:05:12 +0000, Ian Molton wrote:

Has anyone any comments on likely sound quality compared to a
standalone CD player?
I'm thinking along the lines of feeding digital audio from a PC
soundcard via optical link to a standalone Musical Fidelity DAC, then
to amp and speakers.

Most likely you will be playing pack at 48kHz then, so *better* than CD
quality, all other things allowing...

Where would he be getting this 48KHz stuff from? :-)

To answer the question - yes, a computer will squirt bits into your
DAC just as well as any other digital source.

On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 02:05:12 +0000, Ian Molton wrote:

Has anyone any comments on likely sound quality compared to a
standalone CD player?
I'm thinking along the lines of feeding digital audio from a PC
soundcard via optical link to a standalone Musical Fidelity DAC, then
to amp and speakers.

Most likely you will be playing pack at 48kHz then, so *better* than CD
quality, all other things allowing...

Where would he be getting this 48KHz stuff from? :-)

To answer the question - yes, a computer will squirt bits into your
DAC just as well as any other digital source.

On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 02:32:32 -0000
Jim H wrote:

Most likely you will be playing pack at 48kHz then, so *better* than
CD quality, all other things allowing...

But most source material is 41k, so doesn't upsampling to 48 hurt the
sound?

In theory.

In practice (despite the recent threads) I very much doubt that any sort
of half-decent upsampling is audible at all.

I *did* say all other things allowing, htough ;-)

--
Spyros lair: http://www.mnementh.co.uk/ |||| Maintainer: arm26 linux

Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are tasty and good with
ketchup.