How I got into digital audio:
I gave up records a long time ago. I was a kid with a crappy integrated stereo-turntable, who didn't know how to care for records, and was simply blown away by the dynamics and detail available from an inexpensive CD based system. When I got my first decent car, I put a six disc Alpine changer in it, with Boston Acoustics speakers, and Rockford Fosgate amps. When I wasn't spending money on girls or guitars, I was buying CDs...ahh the early 90s.
Fast Forward 20 years and 1000+ CDs later; I had reconnected with the Decware family (always loved tube amps being a casual guitar player who loves good gear), recently had my old Zen amp tuned up by Steve, purchased some MG944, and being a long time home theater fan totally splurged on the recently released Oppo BDP-105. I went for the higher end model with the better DAC because I figured I'd not only use it for Blu-Ray, but be enjoying my CD collection on my Decware gear.
Now, I've not kept up with audio trends from about 2001 to 2013 when my job happened to take me to Peoria, and I reconnected with Steve and his wonderful gear. I was impressed that this fancy new Universal Disc Player from Oppo has USB ports and even a network connection! Snazzy! Even though I'm a "techy geek", it was literally months before I realized what those two options could do for me; I was too busy building giant subwoofers that made the siding on my house flap while watching War of the Worlds and the Terminator movies, and enjoying feeding CDs to my "high end Blu-Ray player with the upgraded DAC". Imagine my surprise when I realized I could, with the remote control, browse my network and play back both videos and audio right from my theater chair!
Soon I was watching all my TV shows and movies through the Oppo - it had almost completely replaced this big, loud, expensive computer I built, stuffed with hard drives that was doing the same thing. The only thing the Oppo didn't have was storage...but as long as said storage was on the network, the Oppo could find it and play it! All the while I was still feeding CDs to the player, shutting off the surround sound receiver and the giant subwoofer with thousands of watts behind it all, and instead turning on my little 2 watt Zen amp and playing my CDs...I was frequently getting pissed at finding discs that didn't always play back smoothly...years and years of handling them both at home and in a car...rattling around in a six disc changer, simply hadn't been kind to them. I did my best, polishing them up, but some were a complete loss. I decided it was time to archive every single one of them, and store them somewhere on the network and simply use the network function like I had been with movies and TV, and only bring out the discs for "critical listening" or "special occasions".
So I do some research, find a good software recommended for ripping CDs I own, and decide to rip everything to FLAC of course. I was impressed to see the software even does a checksum of the rip, and compares it to an international database to make sure my rip is just like everyone else's; an extra layer of security so I know my rips are as bit-perfect as I can make them, and further helps me ferret out any CDs that aren't playing back perfectly. Slow going, but pretty cool setup.
So after I get everything setup and sorted out, I rip a disc and decide to play it back via USB flash drive on the Oppo just to make sure I'm doing this right...no hitches, glitches, or dropouts. You know, trust the ears, even though the fancy software said it was good. I have the original CD in the drive and listen to a track or two for reference, then I pop the flash drive in and press play intending to listen to the whole album to be sure I did this right, and head off to the kitchen to make dinner...
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!! Why does this FLAC file sound *better* than the original CD in the very same player? Even from the kitchen I could hear better clarity, accuracy, and detail. Seriously, WTF!! I came running back into the living/listening room and bounce between the original CD and the FLAC files on flash drive, I can't wrap my head around this. I'm a big believer of K.I.S.S. and because of that, I had assumed the *source* CD was the *best* sound I could have, and a digital rip of the disc while technically "accurate" couldn't sound better...there's too many things that could go wrong, too many steps, too many variable etc.
So, dinner completely forgotten, I quickly rip a couple more albums and reproduce the same results. I'm absolutely baffled by this - and I go post in the various Home Theater and Audiophile forums about my discovery, and ask how this is even possible. Of course I immediately get pummeled by all these electrical engineers and guys with letters after their names, as well as experienced "audiophiles" and people in the home theater business that say emphatically I'm hearing things, I'm tricking myself, and "bits are bits" so it's impossible...or "something must be wrong with your transport".
That last part worried me, as I had dropped $1200 on this player, and that's quite a bit of money for me. But, I did my own research, and I learn about this thing called jitter, and how it could make the same tracks sound different depending on how it's played back, what it's going through etc. This I could wrap my head around, it reminded me of how having room treatment can clean up audio smearing in the time domain. So I follow up my research by writing Oppo technical support, asking if they felt I had a bad transport, or if what I was hearing was real...does my CD Rip actually sound better being played via USB Flash Drive, all things being equal. They responded that a spinning disc is more prone to jitter, and my FLAC files being played from USB Flash Drive should indeed sound better.
Suck it EEs and PHDs!!
All around this time, within the same few months, I got to hear the Mystery Amp, now called the Zen Mystery Amp, and I also got a chance to hear the soon to be released PS Audio DirectStream DAC, and I had ripped all my remaining CDs...which took me almost 3 months! Add to that, downloadable HD music, DSD, and SACDs, and Network Attached Storage and further down the rabbit hole I fall... But that's all maybe a story for another day.