On 13/11/2017 02:22, Trevor Wilson wrote:
On 13/11/2017 12:39 AM, D.M. Procida wrote:
Now that the contents of a CD can be held in RAM, never mind in other
cheaper and still very fast digital storage, what does an expensive CD
player offer that a cheap transport and a decent digital-to-analog
converter cannot?

If DAC products can buffer seconds' or even minutes' worth of data, and
can stream it out to the actual DAC circuitry with GHz precision, there
doesn't seem to be much need any more for costly CD players.

Am I missing something?

**A CD player, unlike a computer transport, interpolates errors. It does
not re-request information be re-read. An argument can be made that a
higher quality transport (more expensive) may read disks without issuing
as many errors. Are those errors audible? Unlikely, except under extreme
circumstances. Nonetheless, high quality transports add very
significantly to the cost of a CD player.

Yes, Trevor, you are missing something.

A CD player does not normally interpolate errors. Most don't even try.
What they do is use the multi-level error correction data that comes
with the data to work out what they should have played.

Andy