This is a re-post of what I have written about, "lack of digital inputs" on the SDR4000SL.
To call a CD only player is a dinosaur is to believe the billions of CD produced are not worthy of their
sonic offering and the music they contain is irrelevant.
Think carefully about any new technology offering and how it might actually improve your
life rather than what that technological widget promises to offer.
The experience of using virtual media is inherently different than physical media.
The human brain develops a map of it's physical surroundings over time and usage.
This is why one can walk up to a shelf of CDs, books or other physical media and almost
instantly locate the object desired. In virtual media, one looks up the desired object via a
menu on screen. The experience is quite different and not always better for some users.
Other examples, try using a touch screen with your eyes closed. Not so easy to do?
Fighter jet control sticks have distinct finger buttons for specific operation, this is done to allow
the pilot to use these controls by feel (brain map) with no visual observation of these control buttons.
There was a time when dinosaurs were believed to be cold blooded.
In time, with more detailed study, improved research tools and understanding,
it was discovered that dinosaurs were warm blooded.
Much like the "Dinosaur CD" one day, a listener might discover sonic delights within them.
The SDR4000SL is an instrument that can allow such discoveries to be made.
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The hard reality is CD disc players are far from a dead end product. Much like Vinyl, there are Billions of CDs in the world today and like Vinyl, many of those recordings are not going to be re-issued into a different media.
The common answer to this fact, simply rip the CD's into a music server and there is your complete music library at the touch of your iPad. In reality, it is far from being that simply.
What the Audiophile market simply does not understand is delivering the very best possible playback from historically significant recordings is important if you interest is in the music and not a visceral sonic experience or indulge in the latest digital playback fashion.
What I will say, the SDR4000SL has playback quality very similar to Hi res files. We know this from real world experience. What is wrong with a 44.1Khz CD player that has the ability to play back recordings with such sound quality?
Today, there are a large number of high quality Phonograph/Vinyl playback systems, why has the market decided Vinyl is worth the investment?
As long as CD's exist in the world of music, there will be a need for a high quality CD player that can extract the last bit of accurate information from these recordings.
The belief that high resolution files alone will cure all sonic ills is a fantasy driven by marketing. High quality sound reproduction is not that simple. As much as Audiophile's don't like the idea, high quality sound reproduction requires a complete system approach.
For those who enjoy mixing and matching their music system components, what is your point of reference/ How do you know for fact the resultant sound from your musical system is the actual sound that happened during any specific recording?
And no, there is no digital input on the SDR4000SL for a host of reasons. To accommodate this feature would completely alter the system configuration and compromise the system clock accuracy and noise in the overall system.
The SDR4000SL was not designed with features driven by marketing impulses, it is deigned to deliver the highest accuracy in playback of 44.1Khz CD's with good user ergonomics and nothing more.
Bernice
because without a USB input, this thing is a dinosaur.
you can't run a music server through it.