Strange - but why are there no HD players for home hi-fi use ?

Has it not occured to people, that it would be good to have a HD based 'cd player' for use in the house ?

a full sized unit, with large HD, so that people can transfer their CDs onto the HD, in wav format

I know Sony USED to make one model ( Har-l500 ) which had a 40gb HD, and supported wav and atrac

and also Yamaha sell the cdr-1300HD which has a 80gb drive and supports wav

but no one else seems to make them

why ?

considering the spaces cds take up in the living room, you would think there would be as many of these set top units for sale, as there are i-pod type portables


?????

even Sony have stopped making their unit, I wonder why ?

I have seen that Accoustic Solutions make a HD player, full size, with 40gb hd that costs £ 200 in uk

but surely the Japanese brands would make them too ?

I for one, do not want to buy something like the A-Solutions, and would rather have a Sony, or Denon, Pioneer, Philips etc etc

SOMEONE PLEASE wake up these idiots at these companies -

its incredible weve had i-pods for years, with minitaure HDs , state of the art tech,

yet hardly anyone has decided to make a full size unit, with conventional HDs, that would be CHEAP to make and EASY !!!!

anyone else agree ?

Does the Xbox do this?

[mjn]

I use an old spec PC, with optical out and TV out.

yes, x-box, pc CAN do this

BUT you need them hooked into a display, etc

I just dont understand why the electronic giants, arent interested in making a standalone unit ?

Sony had 2 models, but stopped making them

IS no one interested out there ????

[JUS]

Don't think you've really thought that one through my friend

"a full sized unit, with large HD, so that people can transfer their CDs onto the HD, in wav format"

Err...why buy cd's at all? You can download all albums now for a lot less than buying cd's. I haven't bought a CD for years ( still buy SACD & DVD-A).

"considering the spaces cds take up in the living room, you would think there would be as many of these set top units for sale, as there are i-pod type portables"

What's the point? I have a little base station for my ipod that connects to my amp. So I can wonder in from having used my ipod in the gym....take it out of my pocket stick it in the base station and away I go. Why do I want another full size box containing all my albums when I have my PC upstairs with them all on and my ipod as well. God, I couldn't think of anything worst...ripping all my cd's to yet another device.

I have all my cd's upstairs in a cupboard. I never buy cd's anymore...why do you want cd's lying around anywhere in the house, not just the lounge, when you can download mp3's to you PC.

Sorry mate.

[mjn]

Because MP3's are terrible quality.

[JUS]

I've got what I think to be a pretty good system...not mega expensive but fine for what I need. I download my albums at 196 and I can't hear the difference between those and cd. I'm sure you could on a mega expensive piece of kit but I can't on mine...and I'm sure I couldn't on most peoples either.

Download at 128 and I agree it sounds horrid.


You could always download at 330 if it matters that much to you.

The only other things I have seen that can do this are the ipod docking stations.

The Bose 1 is supposed to be good, but expensive.

A fully sized unit would be a bit cumbersome moving to your pc to up load the tracks and a unit that could rip the cds would still need to tag all the tracks to display the artist and track information which would take more time.

[hornydragon]

B&O Arcam Marantz make them as do others, richersounds used to list 2 or 3 philips did one with a CD recorder deck newer ones are ethernet and even WiFI capbale for transferring music from PC etc and for distribution have a look at Imerge Servers

I think I HAVE THOUGHT IT Through !

clearly, people STILL buy cds in their millions

and also, people have a collection of cds anyway

have u ever heard of JITTER ? on digital formats ?

cd players have circuits to control jitter, and to reproduce the best sound they can

WHAT chance would a downloaded WAV or MP3 file have, when its been sent in packets ?

NO CHANCE....

anyway, a full size HD player, allows REMOTE CONTROL, hi-fi sized ergonomics, and EASE OF USE

no display, no fans, no nonsense

you might prefer low quality MP3s, thats fine by me

but to say they are as good as cds, is simply untrue..............

PS: there is no PC needed, for full size HD players, you simply load the cd in, and it transfers it to HD-

[JUS]

Sounds like you've been offended by my post. My comments were based on what you originally said. You didn't mention quality once in your original post. you just talked about convinience

Sorry mate, as I said in your other thread. Through my hifi at 192 I can't hear a difference btw cd & 192 mp3. You can't argue with that because you haven't heard mp3 192 through my hifi

P.S. Is there something wrong with your return key? It seems to be going off during sentances.

Originally Posted by BUGANNA

have u ever heard of JITTER ? on digital formats ?

cd players have circuits to control jitter, and to reproduce the best sound they can

WHAT chance would a downloaded WAV or MP3 file have, when its been sent in packets ?

NO CHANCE....

Transfer protocols use various error detection and correction methods to make sure that the downloaded copy is the same as the original. You can download programs with sizes of hundreds or thousands of megabytes, and usually they will work fine. They wouldn´t if there were errors produced by the download process. Jitter in a downloaded MP3 is more likely the result of the file having been produced by fast, low quality ripping.

Björn

hi - Why is jitter a problem then, on cd players ?

when all they have to do is read the digital data ?

jitter is the timing between the 0s and 1s.............kind of like if a file is defragmented............

but in very small measures............

any file on HD will suffer from far more jitter than a cd wav files, due to the sequential nature of cds

and random nature of hds


even so, MP3s are too low in sound quality regardless

[LFC_SL]

because the companies think most consumers will have a dedicated home CD hi-fi or seperates system.

I think DRM, piracy and self interest comes into it. Can't blame them.

Downloading is catching on but really needs to become mainstream and start to threaten CD before one such device is justified?

Originally Posted by BUGANNA

hi - Why is jitter a problem then, on cd players ?

when all they have to do is read the digital data ?

jitter is the timing between the 0s and 1s.............kind of like if a file is defragmented............

but in very small measures............

any file on HD will suffer from far more jitter than a cd wav files, due to the sequential nature of cds

and random nature of hds

Ah, I thought you were talking about errors caused during the file transfer when you wrote about downloading ands packets.

I cannot really see jitter from a HD being a bigger problem than the jitter of a CD. Hard drives can read much more data per second than a second of music is worth, even music of the highest quality. Therefore it is unlikely a HD-player would read and play the music at the same rate, simultaneously, as that would be a rather inefficient reading process. Instead, data from a HD usually goes to the buffer, then to the RAM, before anything is done with it. A HD-player would scoop a lot of music into the memory, and then the music is played from there. At this point the workings/fragmentation of the HD have no effect on the playback. Of course one can still have jitter problems for other reasons, but these are the same as those of a CD player, which also uses a buffer in a similar manner.

Björn