Apologies to Brain Wreck for my shameless mimicing his recent thread, but it sparked a question that’s been plaguing me and his/her thread made me realize that this was the perfect place to get good info.
Here’s the situation: I really love music and want the best-sounding audio system I can afford on a fairly meager budget. So far I’ve succeeded at finding equipment that costs about the same as the big-name components but that invests it all in sound quality (simple controls, great electronics, great sound).
My beloved CD player (Cambridge Audio D500SE) is dying. At this point in technological history I think it would be foolish to invest in another CD player – digital music servers are, theoretically, far superior and are swiftly becoming the standard. However, while I’m perfectly happy with my iPod for headphone listening, it just doesn’t cut it on sound quality when hooked into my home system. Ditto for my computer.
My first thought: look for audiophile-quality digital music servers. I figured I’d be able to find components aimed at the same market demographic (i.e., meager budget but willing to trade features for sound quality). Boy was I wrong:
…a couple of examples, there aren’t many out there as far as I can tell.
It occurred to me that a smarter route might be to build my own digital music server by customizing a computer. But I’m finding the net info on doing this hard to navigate, either being too techie or sounding too much like an advert, with little objective information comparing different options.
So, is it possible to build a computer-based music server that will sound as good as a decent ($300-400 range) CD player? If so, any recommendations about what components I need? The most critical one is surely the sound card, so specific recommentations would be appreciated.
I’m also confused about data formats. Can I preserve the information on the CD with perfect fidelity? Is that what the ‘lossless’ formats do (I seem to think not, from the little info I could gather)?
? (Phew…I’ve been looking for an opportunity to utilize the smileys…how ironic that my first smiley is actually a frownie…)