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Mr. Obvious (?) - digital source (burn)

After decades of improved CD players, I’ve been enjoying an Oppo BDP-103, on audio only.   I now ponder the idea of a home music server, replacing the silver discs.  After reading about the burning process (pit impressions and blank/land space), I’m thinking this front-end physical step creates the same coding on a CD Master Disc, on a hard drive, and on my burned discs via my home Mac.  Home music servers use a hard drive, as do streaming services.  They all use the exact same coding, via a hard drive or 4.7 inch disc.  Correct?   As to the all important sound quality, is the Only variable the DAC doing the de-coding before listening?  I doubt a CD Transport affects sound quality(?).  End question - any need for a home server vs. popping in my manageable group of CDs?   Perhaps there is an engineer out there who can chime in.   Thanks.
bigguy4488
erik_squires
5,268 posts
 
Um, one major variable is whether you are using a lossy or lossless format.

Losless formats like ALAC, FLAC, WAV, should produce a bit-identical replay to the CD they were ripped from. MP3, Ogg, and others do not. There is some argument as to whether WAV on some streamers sounds better due to how they handle the decompression of ALAC or FLAC files. Again, ALAC and FLAC are lossless, but compressed.

MP3, Ogg are lossy and compressed. You cannot reconstruct a perfect copy from them.

Streaming services vary quite a bit, with Tidal being one of the few offering CD quality.


roberjerman
2,086 posts
 
Hard drives crash and die! You better have at least two storing your data. Otherwise, goodbye music collection! That's why I will stick with my collection of CD players!
big_greg
315 posts
 
 I've been slowly copying my CD collection to a dedicated hard drive on my network. It's more for convenience sake than sound quality. It's much easier to scroll through a list on the screen of my phone or tablet than dig through piles of discs. I rip to flac and the sound quality is great.

I use a free sync program to automatically copy the files to another drive every night and also back them up in the cloud.
bigguy4488 OP
4 posts
 
Gents - thanks for the input.  Doubt I’ll ever go to streaming and pay a monthly fee for what I own.... worth it for the 20’s crowd though.   On hard drives, yes I have my old Mac backed up on an external Iomega drive.   On the FLAC file angle of being lossless but compressed for efficient space use - I would think the latter is no issue for a great DAC (as I believe the Oppo is).   Last, I’ll still await an opinion on my statements on the “source” burn-in issue.   After all those years of the hi-end flowery prose of “removing the vails to better resolution”, I’d like to focus on the science side, per se.    Steve W.
headphonedreams
95 posts
 
A dac has to decode the values of the data stream AND the clock signal "built-in" in the signal. The source has to send both. Some dacs are sensitive to timing errors and is therefor sensitive to which transport or source that is used. Others dacs are not sensitive at all (may use large buffers and re-clock the signal) and are then insensitive to different sources. 
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