The original question was one of sound quality using a computer as a source vs a high-quality CD transport. I believe the answer to that question is "Yes, if the components are properly selected and configured, the computer source can sound as good as a CD transport".
A lot of discussion has gone both ways in terms of computer audio being a "bust" vs the future. I think that this question is more easily answered. After all, the convenience of computer audio and its ability to expose you to music that is either not music you're familiar with (from streaming audio sources like Pandora) or music from your own collection that you haven't thought to play on a CD for a long time, is a major plus.
But beyond that, where do we think that the true growth market in new music is going to be? If you're a young music group looking to get your work out there, the most cost-effective way of doing this is to have your work published electronically. It's going to be significantly more difficult to get with a record label that will stamp commercial discs. In addition, this allows them to also exceed the parameters of a redbook CD, and potentially get better audio quality.
So from a practical perspective, if we limit ourselves to physical discs (either vinyl or CD's), then we're sharply restricting our access to music to play in the future.
When seen from the perspective of computer audio being a large growth industry, then it will be almost certain that products will continue to evolve to support the quality demands of that small fraction of us called audiophiles that want good quality sound from computer audio. After all, we're the ones that divorced the transport and the DAC and frequently put them in two separate boxes, and we've been doing that for well over 2 decades (which is the majority of the duration that CD's have even been around). So it shouldn't take much to get a computer transport to be at least as good as a physical CD transport; indeed, I would argue that we are already there with many of our setups.
Yes, accurate and consistent tags in computer sound files is important. But we're seeing more and more automated tagging systems that can take care of this. And we're seeing more ripping software comparing the results of each track rip with other people who have ripped those same CD's to assess for the probability of having achieved 100% accuracy in the rip. So I don't think that either of these two arguments as reasons why someone should shy away from computer audio to be valid now.
Keep in mind that only in the past decade or so has storage space sufficient for an entire audio library in lossless formats been affordable. I remember when I was working as a software engineer that my company purchased a 64GB RAID array in 1997 for $20,000. It had over a dozen drives in it, and could hold maybe the equivalent of 200 or so CD's in FLAC format. Less than 20 years later a 2TB drive with 30+ times the storage space is available for under $100. The point here is that computer audio is still in its early years, and will continue to improve as time goes on.
This is the future, and the industry will be putting its R&D money here rather than towards further enhancing redbook CD transports. Consequently, we will continue to see better and better performance as the industry matures.
Just my 2 cents.
Michael
A lot of discussion has gone both ways in terms of computer audio being a "bust" vs the future. I think that this question is more easily answered. After all, the convenience of computer audio and its ability to expose you to music that is either not music you're familiar with (from streaming audio sources like Pandora) or music from your own collection that you haven't thought to play on a CD for a long time, is a major plus.
But beyond that, where do we think that the true growth market in new music is going to be? If you're a young music group looking to get your work out there, the most cost-effective way of doing this is to have your work published electronically. It's going to be significantly more difficult to get with a record label that will stamp commercial discs. In addition, this allows them to also exceed the parameters of a redbook CD, and potentially get better audio quality.
So from a practical perspective, if we limit ourselves to physical discs (either vinyl or CD's), then we're sharply restricting our access to music to play in the future.
When seen from the perspective of computer audio being a large growth industry, then it will be almost certain that products will continue to evolve to support the quality demands of that small fraction of us called audiophiles that want good quality sound from computer audio. After all, we're the ones that divorced the transport and the DAC and frequently put them in two separate boxes, and we've been doing that for well over 2 decades (which is the majority of the duration that CD's have even been around). So it shouldn't take much to get a computer transport to be at least as good as a physical CD transport; indeed, I would argue that we are already there with many of our setups.
Yes, accurate and consistent tags in computer sound files is important. But we're seeing more and more automated tagging systems that can take care of this. And we're seeing more ripping software comparing the results of each track rip with other people who have ripped those same CD's to assess for the probability of having achieved 100% accuracy in the rip. So I don't think that either of these two arguments as reasons why someone should shy away from computer audio to be valid now.
Keep in mind that only in the past decade or so has storage space sufficient for an entire audio library in lossless formats been affordable. I remember when I was working as a software engineer that my company purchased a 64GB RAID array in 1997 for $20,000. It had over a dozen drives in it, and could hold maybe the equivalent of 200 or so CD's in FLAC format. Less than 20 years later a 2TB drive with 30+ times the storage space is available for under $100. The point here is that computer audio is still in its early years, and will continue to improve as time goes on.
This is the future, and the industry will be putting its R&D money here rather than towards further enhancing redbook CD transports. Consequently, we will continue to see better and better performance as the industry matures.
Just my 2 cents.
Michael