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New Transport Approach

With never-ending advances in technology and tumbling prices, I wonder if any high-end audio CD player manufacturer is considering an approach such as this - populate the player with 700 megabytes of RAM and pre-read the whole CD into RAM. We know this is completely reliable (or else our beloved MS Office wouldn't work). Then the whole transport system could be shut down, eliminating any concerns about mechanical or electrical noise, and the "CD" could be played back straight from RAM through the DAC. It would seem like this would reduce or eliminate jitter completely. There would be an "initialization" time penalty, but I would think for the high-end market, that wouldn't be a huge deal. Any thoughts? -Kirk
kthomas
deven8
81 posts
 
Isnt this similar to what you are talking about the Knekt Kivor System  by LINN.
http://www.linn.co.uk/spec_sound/products.cfm?range=Knekt#136
blues_man
133 posts
 
This would be one of the easiest things to pirate, and maybe that's why the CD mechanism was set up that way 20 years ago. I'm sure you can already do this now though with regular CDs. When the music industry decided on digital, they probably figured that since it costs a small fraction of what it costs to produce LPs, they would make enough to pay for piracy.
tok20000's avatar
tok20000
608 posts
 
Just a thought...

You really would not need 700 MB ram.

I suggest using 128MB or 256MB of ram, and having a 14+ GB removeable hard drive in the unit.

This way an entire CD or DVD could be read into the hard drive. Data would flow from the hard drive to the RAM. From the RAM to the processor/DAC. Heck you caould have a huge 60GB HD in the unit with all of your favorite CD's scanned in.

Anyway, just a thought.
kthomas OP
911 posts
 
There is a company named Lansonic who is doing just what you describe - a disk-based audio component. It's got an ethernet interface on the back-end, audio-component interface (digital and analog) to feed a stereo system. It looks just like a server on the network, controllable by any other computer on the network. I haven't heard it, but would think reading the CD off the HD would eliminate the jitter issues, etc.

My big concern with purchasing one of these is the controlling software - usually hardware companies who need software write software that isn't up to par. It's not their specialty and it shows. If they ever prove to have the kinks worked out, it looks like a really flexible component. -Kirk

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