Music Servers VS Excellent Transports?

Linn has just come out with two interesting pieces, the Klimax DS and Akurate DS, both of which are D/A converters that have nothing but an Ethernet input. Your music is streamed to the DS from your computer or NAS. Sound quality is said to be better than Linn's Sondek CD12. I haven't heard one yet, so we'll see if they are really that good.

A couple of disagreements:

1. No CD playback can equal the sound of the best vinyl.

2. It is very difficult to equal the sound of the best CD transports/players with a computer/hard drive/server as the source- harder than some make it sound in this thread.

Sydsrig,

Unfortunately, Linn is only doing private demos off site. I don't think you can tell much at a show demo anyway. I'm scheduled to get a unit to play with when I get back. Check with me a couple of weeks after CES and I will fill you in.

Dcstep,

We have a few Olive's a Ultrafi and they are convenient pieces. With a good digital cable into a good DAC, the sound is nice but not fantastic. Much better sound can be had by many high end CD players or transports.

As for the sound quality of higher res formats like SACD and DVD-A, I have never heard either come close to the best vinyl playback. Unlike many others, I find SACD particularly disappointing in the high frequencies- enough to where I often prefer red book CDs played on the best CD players. I guess it doesn't really matter anyway given that SACD is barely a viable format these days.

Dcstep,

Doing high res vinyl copies is very interesting. I have not heard any, but I can imagine that very good results are possible. I'm amazed at the sound I get on CD copies of vinyl using a meridian A/D converter.

Now I see what you are trying to do and it makes perfect sense.