Yes a small separate CD player is as rare as rocking horse s...
Recently I was faced with this problem. I have a home bar and the music is from iPad, usually via Bluetooth to the amplifier. But occasionally friends and family want their CDs to be played. I wasn't prepared to pay CD player prices so opted for a Sony DVD player. Just over £30. It works well, unfortunately no front display, but no real hardship there.
Sony DVD Player
I bought the slightly older model which had analogue outputs. I see this one has HDMI and optical only
I don't use anything other than single core within the processor for that one program, and everything from the memory to the drives have been optimised to get the best out of it. This goes for the Operating system right down the BIOS setting the optimal clock for my system. I've been messing for many years now. I know there is another jump with dedicated server software running in core mode, but I'm happy with it, so why break it.If this is really the case and not some imagined thing, then your sound hardware in the PC is a load of junk. Bin it / don't use it. What DAC is it? Is it motherboard based?
A good computer DAC generates a highly accurate hardware data clock that is used to signal to the rest of the hardware and software chain to provide blocks of data in a sufficiently timely manner to maintain an uninterrupted and accurate audio stream. So long as the compute can provide timely data for these block requests then nothing whatsoever has any impact on the sound that you hear given otherwise identical bit streams.
If something in the computer is in any way interfering with the ability to provide audio data in a timely manner, then you typically hear obvious crackles/glitches. I work with profession audio interfaces for recording and mixing music, so I am quite used to how these work under the very demanding conditions of mixing and mastering.
Now it is possible that the hardware clock is actually synchronised to an effectively software based clock, in which case the old world of wow and flutter can have an impact, however with decent hardware DACs and appropriately configured/implemented supporting software this does not happen.
It’s exactly why people adopted CD in the first place! That and the ‘perfect sound, forever’ slogan...
Sadly, when you've got the bug, you'll do anything to get more detail out of that humble CD and if you enjoy it, its another notch that you'll never give up
Sadly, when you've got the bug, you'll do anything and if you enjoy it, its another notch that you'll never give up
One thing that's true though is that all we are trying to do is recreate the trusty old vinyl sound from a digital media regardless of whether its CD or streamed. It's amazing how silly it can get and lets face it. A £1K record player with a £1.5k valve amp plus a pair nice of 3 way speakers including cables with the right LP will obliterate them all in the right room
isn't that part of its charmPops clicks and scratching to boot
isn't that part of its charm
You don't need to do anything. I stick the CD in the laptop, rip it, drag and drop. What more you do is up to you. You needn't rip at all. I just find it more convenient to rip and then browse through it all later.
Last time I was in Birmingham HMV there seemed no age difference to those buying, browsing. Entirely unscientific.Are there stats on who buys CDs in terms of ages? Presumably people's first experience of music on demand is now streaming - are these people going out and buying CDs? Or just it mostly they people that grew up on them?
I dug out a few CDs dating back to around 1985. They still play fine. Eventually this might happen, but they are ripped anyway.And as CDs get older there is always the risk of CD rot
Not so. Some of us are very happy not to have that old vinyl sound. So who is this "all " kimo sabe ?Sadly, when you've got the bug, you'll do anything to get more detail out of that humble CD and if you enjoy it, its another notch that you'll never give up
One thing that's true though is that all we are trying to do is recreate the trusty old vinyl sound from a digital media regardless of whether its CD or streamed. It's amazing how silly it can get and lets face it. A £1K record player with a £1.5k valve amp plus a pair nice of 3 way speakers including cables with the right LP will obliterate them all in the right room
And he will inherit a load of media that he will have no device to play it on and/or CD rot has set in
Not really CD rot does not seem to affect commercial CD's and computers have optical drives ..Blu ray DVD still play cd and cd players are still being made.
Last time I was in Birmingham HMV there seemed no age difference to those buying, browsing. Entirely unscientific.
Also note, what people do when young isn't the same as what people do when older. When young I was drinking K and Breaker. I wouldn't do it now.
Kids tend to be young, not have much disposable income and probably won't stream either. They might be using torrents and getting all their music free anyway.
As you get older you are going out less, stopping in more, have more money and then might spend your money on vinyl, CDs, streaming or whatever else.
That assumes that the CD player will always correctly read the data from the CD in time for uninterrupted playback. This is the advantage that ripping the CD with something like dBPowerAmp has - it can keep retrying for as long as it takes or eventually gives up. The data it reads can be validated against online database for accuracy before accepting the file as a good accurate rip. When playing back such a file with a decent media player encompassing a good DAC and good quality digital processing, there is less to go wrong than when playing back a CD in a CD player. Accurate ripping a CD back to a file is really just a way of removing a source of failure (the mechanical drive/and optical media).
Digital is rather like analog small signal processing in some ways - in the analog world we worry about the quality of pre-amps, tone controls, interconnects etc. In the digital world we worry about the quality of processing algorithms (and the actual DAC boundary). In both worlds there are good and bad. In most standard computer OSs audio drivers, cheap streaming boxes, music out via HDMI digital etc - there are often relatively basic algorithms used compared to say similar processing that goes on in my digital audio workstations which of course are professional studio grade algorithms. A high end USB DAC with its own dedicated playback software that does everything the right way can be technically as good as if not better than high end HiFi components.