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Digital Audio for Dummies

As I have stated before, I'm a bit of an audio dinosaur.  I love simple.  I love reliable.  I love a high performance/price ratio.  So no surprise I'm still happily spinning discs.  Give me a nice CD player direct to an integrated and I'm good to go.

But it is 2018.  Reading on this forum about the demise of Oppo was a bit of a wake up call. Also the Lyngdorf 2170 has inspired me.  An elegant all in one box product that is ready to connect with many of the digital options now available.  So I'd like to get educated on what's out there and what you suggest.  Basically I would want to know about ripping all my CD's--exactly how that is done.  Dedicated audio computer?  How big of a hard drive/other considerations?  Wired vs. wireless.  And then what streaming services are out there?  Cost, quality, ease of use?

PLEASE keep things simple and don't assume the reader knows, for example, what Roon is.  I've seen it mentioned, but would want to know exactly what this does, how it functions, etc.

THANKS!
corelli

Showing 7 responses by corelli

corelli OP
1,067 posts
 
Appreciate all the feedback.  Obviously there's a lot to learn. 

amg56, over time I hope I can give more specifics but I'm in a learning phase and it's a bit difficult right now to give more specifics.  I'm sure in time I will.

One immediate question is sound quality.  It seems that a $29 optical drive isn't going to read CD's as accurately as what I have now.  I would hate to go through all the work of ripping all these CD's and then have digital data with less integrity than what I have now.  At least owners of megabuck transports might question this. An extension of this question might be this--Do some feel that their sound is BETTER after they went through this transition. (I suppose it's possible if less jitter, better DAC, etc.  But if just feeding a digital signal  say to the Lyngdorf, it seems the best you would do is equal, but not better).
corelli OP
1,067 posts
 
" There is no doubt in my mind that my hardware playing .wav files beats ANY transport on the market. "

So Steve, help me out here.  How can we both start with the same data on a Redbook CD and it ends up sounding better an a system like yours as opposed to a conventional CD player?  I'm not challenging you here, it just doesn't make sense to me. Where is the "improvement" occurring? To my way of thinking the best I could hope for in this process is to not loose any data that I have on my original CD.
corelli OP
1,067 posts
 
So are wav files currently "the best" way to go as far as SQ is concerned?

What are you guys paying to download hi-res music?
corelli OP
1,067 posts
 
Got it.  Now that I think about it I see where it would be very unlikely hi-res would be streamed.  Thanks for the correction.  A necessary part of learning!
corelli OP
1,067 posts
 
Thanks for the further clarification Steve.  Sure, that would bake sense as far as jitter in concerned.  And obviously streamed hi-res files can be superior.  But in that case we're comparing apples (Redbook) to oranges (Hi-res).  I was focused on apples to apples in my earlier comments.
corelli OP
1,067 posts
 
Thanks myoungva.  You clearly answered one of the questions I had on capturing bit perfect data via an inexpensive CD drive.  Excellent concise info.
corelli OP
1,067 posts
 
Thanks for the further thoughts guys.  Gives me some direction on some avenues to explore.
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