On Sat, 2005-12-10 at 13:02 -0800, CardinalFang wrote: > If the drives were anything less than 100% > accurate, PC's wouldn't be able to install apllications or do any of > the normal things we take for granted.
Sorry, but you've got a twist or two to your thinking. The basic idea is right. Once you get the music bits off the RedBook CD and onto your computer's hard disk, the trip from the disk to the squeezebox is easy. And the SqueezeBox does all the hard work, and the late models have decent DACs and Sean and company put real engineering into making them sound good. So you should expect it to sound as good as a $1000 or more 'audiophile' CD player. But computers don't read RedBook audio using the audio access. They use something called "CD Extraction" which came onto the scene about 10 years later. RedBook CDs are not data CDs, they have 'different' error correction. The standard data CDs that software comes on is vastly more robust at being bit accurate. The RedBook spec predates all of the CD computer uses by about a decade. So the RedBook does it differently. And it has its own error detection and correction system, And when it can't read the tunes, there are standard ways to fake it. Ways that were "inaudible" back in the early 80s when the comparison was to old scratched vinyl or cassette tape. But those details don't make the fundamental idea of your sudden though be wrong. Once you use a program to get get the real bits off the RedBook CD, you're done. And it will sound as wonderful as the DAC lets it. Every time, forever. So use Sean's engineering, and see if you love it. If not, look at some mods, or a Benchmark DAC-1 or other external stuff. Never look at the disk files containing the tunes again. (Do make backups, of course). -- Pat http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimserver/slimsoftware.html _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
