Changing Home system from cd to mp3 - Best option?

[carleast]

Hi,

I'm looking at ways to change my music system from cd to mp3. But I don't want to compromise on sound quality. My current cd player cost £1500 so replacing it will be difficult. In fact impossible. But what is the best option if I wanted to do it?

I know of the Slim Devices Transporter which seems like a good option. But what options do I have with mp3 players?

Are there any with digital outputs that I can connect to seperate DAC?

Are there ipod docks that are good enough to replace my £2800 cd/amp combo?

Are there any external hifi DACs that accept USB?

Answers to the above questions would be grateful

[amcluesent]

So, you're going to have to digitise your music to a lossless format like FLAC or Apple lossless to retain any semblance of quality.

IIRC, you can now get a modified iPod and dock which provides a digital feed into a DAC of your choice. Even a 'good' Ipod analogue dock like the Arcam will be limited to the quality, decent though is, of the DAC in the Ipod.

You could go for a premium quality, PC based music player. Google for the PDF "The art of building Computer Transports" for one view on how to optimise a PC for music ripping and playback.

IMHO, as a Transporter owner, it provides excellent quality on FLAC playback and I can easily convert to MP3 V0 for my Ipod.

[Mr_Sukebe]

A suggestion:
- Use EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to cut all of your CDs to FLAC. FLAC is a non-lossy compression and with decent gear sounds better than MP3. If you chose to cut to MP3 later, you can do a mass conversion using Foobar2000. Note that both of those software packages are freeware. EAC will also Tag all of your CDs automatically.
- Get yourself a couple of hard drives for your PC. Put your FLAC on one of the drives for general use and use the second for a full copy of the first. It took me over a month to cut my 500 CDs to FLAC. A second drive will only cost a max of £100, and is well worth it for the safety of covering for WHEN your hard drive fails. Drive failure is not common, but it'll happen eventually.
- Buy a Wifi enabled router. Netgear make some decent units at sensible prices which are a doddle to setup and support 802.11B and G. Ensure you use WPA encryption to prevent your neighbours stealing bandwidth.
- The best streaming audio player I've come across it the SB+. It's a super-hot rodded Squeezebox3 with improved PSU, clocks etc. Not cheap at around £1k, but can compete with some seriously high end CDPs. By streaming from a PC, it does mean that you don't need a noisy PC anywhere near your stereo, definitely good from an aesthetics perspective.