I realize there is a lot of emotion when it comes to audio - have been out of this for some time, so it was interesting to see that all the "psycho-acoustic" stuff that used to be debated about turntables has transferred to digital.
I have to say that as someone who has been building PC's since they were invented, I have a great deal of difficulty with some of the assertions being made about audible effects from various parts of the reproduction chain.
I am a big believer in fidelity to source, and transparency in path.
Since the CD contains a digital file, and the read mechanism is inferior to a hard disk (due to the Redbook (lack of) error correcting), any audible effect is going to come from a failure to read the data correctly, the quality of the DAC, and/or the quality of the analogue output within the CD player.
By eliminating the CD and working with a source digital file, one source of error is gone. With an external DAC, one has a choice based mostly on economics, and then the reason I bought the Bryston BP26/MM and 4BsSST2 is their mastery of the analogue space.
I went with the Transporter as my digital "player" because I was starting from the streaming problem, not the DAC problem.
I ripped to FLAC as my digital source. When you use a program like dbPoweramp or EAC to do the ripping, you start to see the "read" problem. It is possible to get a different digital file out of successive reads, which attests to the lack of robust error correction and the fragility of the CD as a source. The dpPoweramp software compares the rip against a database of other rips to give you an indication of whether or not you matched the most common result.
Once you do have a clean digital file and store it in the computer domain, there is no chance the source will be affected by moving it between components.
I do understand there is the issue of jitter, but before we go there, just remember that we are typing on a message board using widely different source equipment (PC, MAC, software) across thousands of different networks containing tens of thousands of routers and switches, and yet somehow, without fail, when I hit an "a" I get an "a".
I suppose the digital player is also a possible variable - FLAC is a standard encoding format and lossless, and the decoder is also standard, so a proper implementation should deliver the same bitstream regardless of hardware. As long as you are in the digital domain there can't be anything affecting the source (remember the "a")
Now that I have the whole thing set up, the question would be whether an additional investment in another DAC would be audible to me. I accept that this is personal to everyone, so I only judge with a sample of one.
The real question for me is why the music industry won't sell me a high quality digital source file so that I don't have to go through all this rigmarole to listen to music.
Cheers,
Waleed.
