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The art of building Computer Transports

What started out as a $1,000 experiment in storing & playing CDs from PC turned into an amazing step forward in music reproduction.

Initially, I was happy to sacrifice some sound quality over PC convenience (as my 18 month old daughter was causing havoc with all our CDs - fingerprints, scratches, hidden just about everywhere...). Like others, my CDs were copied to black CD-Rs.

Welcome to a new paradigm. I was pleasantly surprised over how good a computer transport sounded. It quickly surpassed my AA Prestige SE player's internal Philips drive. This was recently upgraded to a Sony which is a step up from the Philips. Nonetheless, the computer delivered much better performance. Having the pleasure to listen to high-end transports (Wadia 270SE, Esoteric P03, MBL's $20,000+ 1621A, full DCS stack), I am comfortable in saying that Computers have outclassed them.

My experience in IT and a background in physics certainly helped in getting to an optimal setup together with learnings from the web including Audio Asylum. I kept notes on all tunings and changes that were necessary. As this list grew, I decided to write a paper. Interestingly, this paper led me to question many assumptions which in most cases led to further sonic improvements. Its amazing how much can be done when creating a dedicated computer transport. It cost me ~$1,500 (excluding digital cable).

I have reworked this paper to be a full guide on building computer transports. In keeping with the spirit of open source and freeware, this paper can be found at the web link provided, otherwise goto http://www.imageevent.com/cics. There are many screen shots and details on important BIOS settings, etc.. Its in pdf format and is 2.7MB large.

Your feedback would be appreciated as I'm sure more can be achieved. Paper is at version 0.1.

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Topic - The art of building Computer Transports - cics 08:00:10 04/05/07 (204)
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