Best solution for CD and mp3

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I've been thinking of the best solution to have access to CDs and music files from one unit. One option is to have CD player to amp to speakers and then maybe just link an ipod to the cd player. Disadvantages to this is that you have to load up your ipod and also user experience when playing music files is not too great.

This morning I had a eureka moment! lol. How about using a laptop as a jukebox. So connections would be laptop to DAC to amp to speakers. That way cds can be played through the laptop and the laptop can always access a NAS for all the music. User experience would be good, just need to find a nice front end jukebox or even keep with itunes.

My question is would CD playback be comprimiszed being played this way? e.g. cyrus cd player to cyrus amp VS macbook cd drive to cambridge audio DAC.

What do you guys think?


Michael
 
From reading around, I get the impression that laptops (even via their digital outputs into an external DAC) are not as good as a dedicated CD player.

What's your budget?
 
If I was to go the dedicated direction then I'd spend 1k for each of cd player, amp and speakers.

What makes the digital output from a laptop not as good as one processed by a good cd player?
 
If I was to go the dedicated direction then I'd spend 1k for each of cd player, amp and speakers.

What makes the digital output from a laptop not as good as one processed by a good cd player?

In theory, the laptop SHOULD actually have the edge, as it's possible to create "bit perfect" copies of your CDs using EAC and similar. What I mean by that is that if a CD player finds an error, it simply "guesses" what the data should be. On a PC, data accuracy is required, and EAC will keep going back to re-read the data point until it gets it right. So correctly ripped FLAC files of your CD should be more accurate.
In practice, all is not quite what it seems (although some will argue this). Jitter is a phrase thrown around a lot. In short it relates to timing issues of when the data is being sent. For a CD, data is sampled at 44100hz. If however each data point is a little early or later when being received by the DAC chip, some believe that it's possible for the sound to be impacted.

Laptops and PCs tend to have pretty lousy jitter, and don't make great digital tranports, and that's before you get to their power consumption, noise etc.

If it were my £1k, I'd take one of the following options:
1. If you want a CD player, then a s/h Densen 400XS. Awesomely good CD player.
2. If you want a unit to play ripped music, a Squeezebox Touch and a Meridian 568.2 as a DAC.
The Touch is a very good digital transport, and can address an external USB drive directly. So once you've cut your music and put it on the drive, it doesn't need to go anywhere near a network or PC.
The 568.2 is a legacy AV processor that when new cost over £3k. It just so happens that it can happily act as a stereo DAC and pre-amp. As it's a legacy AV unit (not HDMI compatible without an expensive add on box), then can be picked up for around £800.
I've yet to come across a digital streaming solution that sounds better than a Touch/568.2 combo.
 
Just rip the CDs using dbPoweramp or EAC as FLAC and use the laptop to feed the DAC. It's alright talking about jitter etc but have you actually checked to see if you can hear it?

Obviously everyone is different so if you can't tell then you've saved yourself a great deal of cash :) Alternatives would be something like a Squeezebox rather than a laptop.

Mr_Sukebe has some good suggestions tho again, see what you can hear, just because one person can possibly hear some differences you may not be able to.
 
Yeah I think like with all sounds, demo is a must. Was just thinking what the most stream lined/ best user experience set up would be.
 
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