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Using a CDP to copy a cd to computer

Anyone tried using a hi fi CDP to copy cds to their computer? It seems like you would get a better "read" with a higher quality cd player. The internal CD drives on computers can't compare to a good CDP. I wonder if a digital "out" jack on a cdp could provide a signal that a computer can accept?

I'm using a iMac G5.

Any thoughts? Experience?
mcmanus
whocares73
16 posts
 
Just use your computers cdrom and EAC software, "Exact Audio Copy". Not sure if there is EAC for Mac?

http://etree.org/eac.html

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ejliu
109 posts
 
Using EAC with a high speed CD-ROM in secured mode will insure 100% accuracy. Any error encounter during the read is verified many times and errored corrected before continuing. I have encountered about 2 out 500 discs that had excessive error that EAC can not correct. It was because the surface was damaged.

Remeber a CD-ROM can easily read up to 40-50x. EAC can do about 6-9X in secured mode using the same CD-ROM.

Reading digital output from CD Player is a single path solution that will result in jitter and many errors. Error correction will help but never elimnated completely. This situation is very different than reading information from an analog source that dictates better mechanism results in better accuracy.
mmrog
101 posts
 
Another vote for EAC here. I've even had it correct flaws in CDs that would otherwise be unplayable.
mcmanus OP
82 posts
 
So if we use EAC, the data from the computer should be as good or better than the best transport can provide. This would mean that running a file (processed by EAC) from the computer to a DAC rather than using a transport would result in the best possible reproduction (limited only by the DAC and downstream equipment). If this is the case, why is everyone still using transports?
ejliu
109 posts
 
The data stored on the HD would be identical to the data on a music CD, but transporting this data to the DAC would result in the same problem as transporting the data from a standard CD transport to a DAC. It's also a one-time process that results in jitter, RF interference and etc. In a computer environment, it would be quite bad.

Also getting an exact copy of the digital output is not quite easy. For example, in a Windows XP environement, XP's sound mixer SW will resample 44.1kHz to 48kHz and back again at the sound card. This will result in errors. For bit perfect, need to bypass the sound SW with Kernel streaming or ASIO SW and make sure that the sound card used does not resample as well. (Most SoundBlaster resamples) This problem is a legacy problem. Early cheap sound card only process everything at 48kHz to save money. So all sound data are re-sampled to 48kHz to save time.

Theoretically, computer should be a much better transport by a long shot, but it's not quite as easy to use IMHO.
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