Having an external DAC, i'm facing (like many others i guess) the dilemma of going for a quality CD transport or for a CDless setup, something like the Brennan B2/Cocktail Audio equivalents…
I'd like to give a CDless setup a try buy i'm concerned about the data quality of ripped CDs.
Is a quality transport needed in ripping CDs?
Common sense would suggest that yes, you need a quality transport, so the ripped files (say FLACs) will have all the correct data from the CD.
Anyway i read that there's a crucial difference between ripping a CD and playing a CD.
When playing a CD, the machine has to do it in real time and correct any error of the fly.
So a quality transport comes in handy to minimize reading errors 'live'.
When ripping, on the contrary (at least from what i understand), the 'problematic' parts of the disc get read several times to extract all the correct data from them.
If that's true, the logical conclusion would be that a FLAC ripped by a low cost CD rom drive will always sound better than a CD played by a very expensive CD transport.
Any thoughts/insights on that?
I'd like to give a CDless setup a try buy i'm concerned about the data quality of ripped CDs.
Is a quality transport needed in ripping CDs?
Common sense would suggest that yes, you need a quality transport, so the ripped files (say FLACs) will have all the correct data from the CD.
Anyway i read that there's a crucial difference between ripping a CD and playing a CD.
When playing a CD, the machine has to do it in real time and correct any error of the fly.
So a quality transport comes in handy to minimize reading errors 'live'.
When ripping, on the contrary (at least from what i understand), the 'problematic' parts of the disc get read several times to extract all the correct data from them.
If that's true, the logical conclusion would be that a FLAC ripped by a low cost CD rom drive will always sound better than a CD played by a very expensive CD transport.
Any thoughts/insights on that?