Eric,
I have the feeling that you are right. Garbage in garbage out. A better system will just accentuate that. But, maybe, there is something out there - maybe these chinese players, or maybe if I will just add a tube output to the actual cd-player will di it better than before.
But as you said, from ones and zeros cannot be obtained music.
Well, no. You can get music from 0s and 1s. It jst takes a lot more of them than CD players typically handle.
For example, pay an orchestra 1,000,000$ to play live concerts for you. At that price, they will even pause, skip tracks, and rewind, though I don't suggest you try their fast forward. Zeros and ones do the trick in the right demonination.
Seriously, you can represent any waveform to any level of accuracy, with 1s and 0's, if you process enough bits per second. I'd like to hear 64 bit resolution at 500,000 samples per second, personally: I bet it would sound *just* as good as anyone's analogue set up.
But the CD would be a trifle large...
The bottom line is, you like a certain kind of coloration (if you like what *any* tuner does, that's the only explanation - even good tuners play music from studios with less than audiophile gear). Tubes are probably the way to go, in that case.
Ask your favorite radio station what kind of gear they use - it's almost certainly digital, these days. And it's probably affordable stuff - commercial groups don't do botique electronics. You might be able to replicate their "sound" with their gear.
And maybe media really is the culprit. I have a Gerry Rafferty CD. I play it on my computer's sound system; it's almost unlistenable though my stereo. I find SACD to be a whole lot better than Original Flavor; Norah Jones comes over just fine.
