Ayon Audio CD-5 versus CD-5s

Hi DH, to be fair streaming from HDD's & servers is maturing rapidly. You made a good point about buying the music you want in whatever format is available. I still plan to buy cd's & vinyl where possible in the next few years & build up my collection, but will inevitably buy a high end server in 4 or 5 years & control my library by Ipad. The CD-5s provides an ideal platform for streaming up to 24/96.

There seems to be a little confusion here ,with the Bryston digital player being used ,this replaces a transport ,for there are No moving part now
And all ripped flac files , or hi Rez down loads go to a external hard drive then to a solid state card reader buffer,
Than to a Highly modified Angela@ sound card, then to a discreet
Class A analog output to the dac which I am using a Wireworld
Platinum USB, and xlr digital cable with outstanding results.
This is the future ,for once done no more CDs to clean everything
Is obtained from a Droid or IPad with all the album art .
Just touch the screen and it is done,or make a favorites in any order .
The hardest part is taking the time to rip our cd collection.
It took me a solid month to rip 500 CDs through a db power amp program.

With my setup their is no crashes ever.At first the Bryston had some software issues this is now resolved,and I have had several
$10 K plus analog systems and with the Ayon Skylla-2 dac
Myself and others feel this is a great way to get the benefits
Of analog with many added bonuses. I donot miss the ritual of cleaning and drying discs then still having clicking and pops .
The New cd-5 s, as well as the Skylla -2 now use Mundorfs best
Silver,Gold,Oil capacitors and these are specked even better at 1 percent.
This makes this unit more dynamic ,liquid, and open sounding
Very good analog sound is a good way to describe this digital sound.

Audioman, I don't doubt your digital solution sounds great, but there seems to be a lot of steps in the signal chain, so i'm less convinced about of any advantage from shortening the signal path. Less moving parts? Well look at Accuphase, Ayon & Vitus; they produce bullet proof transports which are very accurate, so I don't see any deficit there. Whilst I do agree that mainstream cd's will inevitably fade out, leaving mostly audiophile cd labels still producing high rez cd's, I don't believe in absolutes like "This is the future". Who says so? That is not true for me if I don't agree with it. I plan to buy a lot of audiophile grade cd's and vinyl in the next few years and continue to play them on my cdp. My next cdp is likely to be the future replacement for the current Vitus SCD-010. I'd be more than happy to put the Vitus up against any streamer on the planet. At the end of the day however, vinyl played on a high end rig is still clearly superior to even the best digital front ends i've heard. As for Ayon, since I already reviewed the CD-5s in an earlier post, I wont comment any further on it's sound or repeat specs or part bins which can be readily found on Ayon's website or in the many online reviews. Suffice to say it is a wonderful sounding player.

There seems to me continued confusion over the advantages of reading a CD into memory before replay as in a computer versus just reading it on the fly as CD players do. Anyone who has experienced the vastly different ripping times on various CDs will appreciate that there are numerous read-errors on direct replay which a small buffer can only imperfectly address.