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DVD Rippers are Cheap and CD Transports are Not -- Why?

I have owned pricey CD transports from Wadia, Theta, and Levinson and inexpensive DVD RW drives built into music servers.  All are highly regarded for their ability to do the job -- the transports sound great and the severs rip bit perfect files without so much as a hiccup.  How do the ripping drives do their job so well at a fraction of the cost of the expensive transports?
I ask because transports are prone to break and parts availability becomes a problem.  My Wadia transport now is a very cool looking doorstop.  I am toying with the idea of buying an Oppo universal player but am worried it will end up a useless brick.
Any thoughts?
jclctr

Showing 1 response by bpoletti

bpoletti
1,566 posts
 
The logical alternative seems to be to rip the digital media to a hard drive (or even better, and SSD) and play the music from that source.  Those devices provide a much better, faster read rate and no real need for error correction or multiple reads.  Use USB, or coax / SPDIF output from the soundcard into the DAC. 

Computers with ripping capability are a fraction of the cost of most transports.

That said, I'm using an Onkyo C-7030 as a CD transport and it works great.  I haven't implemented the computer option even though I have about 250gb of easily accessed music files.
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