Will computer to DAC replace transports and cdp's?

Answer to original question, YEP.. But you will need a decent transport still to do a quick friend comes over with a new disc scenario to play it right away,,, get a DAC with a couple inputs and your set... Prices are going to drop considerably on CDP's even more than they have I predict in the next 2 years, for example a WADIA holding nicely in the 3000.00 range will be dumped for about half that and a CD rom or decent DVD player will be found the solution to work with a High quality DAC that can be flexable enough to stay with the growing MAss storage Redbook drive solutions. Maybe its just an opinion but I already see signs on this board at audiogon alone swinging that direction and even see many sales on excellent red book machines, and its not cause SACD is taking over its because MASS storage redbook is, even in the high end.

Pardales, I agree, however it is still nice to be able to grab a disc and play straight out with decent transport and the point is that you can still hook up one rather cheap, with SACD or whatever and still have a dac with computer hooked all in one as long as you have the multiple inputs on the DAC, but yeah costly machines are going to get hurt very soon, not that they have not already, but 15000.00 Reimyo''s and Meitners owners are going to take a bath at some point.

Grannyring, sure I have seen wadia with input cards, and Quad Audio type CD players able to play the disk and have an external music source flow thru right to the internal dac, they even come with several digital inputs I think too.. This is good because you can have a good transport right there, as well as all your high quality cables are shared to feed the analog audio signal to your system after conversion...This eliminates having to have several cables too. So yes even the super hi-end pieces can be modified to be not completly obsolete. But I just choose to for now use a good DAC cause it will never go out of style and is a safer investment and will always just be a good decoder box basically for whatever Redbook source can be thrown at it, and just Run any type Transport I want vs. expensive CDP,Plus Dac's in general now have extra input so I can leave a transport and when the Audio MEdia systems settle down, can hook anything else simaltaneous to the same dac and not lose out on anything.. But I will never invest in a a very expensive straight CD player again, cause yeah unless they all start offering or can even fit the extra components in it for external devices to share the dac its a risk, and will start loosing value more and more.

I have thought the same about Ipod but it will not have quality sound files in the first place like the lossless systems of the other types, I think it is primarily compressed files like mp3 or something... from what I understand the only way is to have a big Gig hard drive or memory card type setup and transfer CD completly un-altered, an Apple type computer is suppose to be excellent, but Ipod itself is not near the quality of CD from my understanding.

I don't think it is at all the same as Vinyl Vs. CD, just my opinion, Vinyl is superior in general cause the recordings can sound more natural than Digital period. Especially if done well and on a playback system worthy of it, Now with digital Transfer from storage Vs. spinning a CD is a whole different thing, cause its nature from either have nothing to do with analog sound like a Turntable. Fact is the further you can advance digital transfer the better it will be, regardless if people want to believe its impossible for a 400.00 dollar computer storing the INfo cannot sound as good as a 12,000 Transport transfering it in real time. I think it is very possible for a hard drive or storage based whatever we are talking about here to have less errors than a real time disc spinning, as long as the info is stored correctly in the first place.