I’m looking for ideas and input for an idea I’m mulling over. I’m a computer idiot, so I don’t even know if this is possible.

I have two Sony 400 CD mega changers that I use for my two channel rig and both are full. I have about two hundred more CD’s lying around. I can either buy another changer, or go all digital. I’m leaning toward the all digital direction. I would love to buy an Olive Opus media storage device, but I’ll never spend $4,000 on one of them. It’s just too much for me to justify. The changers work OK, but they have their obvious limitations. I’d much rather have my CD’s stored on a hard drive so I can sort and play and create playlists. I also find that when I play the changers in random, I don’t think it’s very random…..

I do not like ripped or compressed music files. They just don’t sound right to me. I know there are advocates for some of the formats, but I’d rather just store all my CD’s in a lossless, uncompressed format. Hard drive space is getting cheap too, so I don’t see any value with compressed formats.

So here’s my idea….

Buy a used laptop with enough processing power to do what I want it to do. Buy an external hard drive with ESATA or USB and at least 1T of space. Spec out and install a super fast drive that will let me copy all my CD’s onto the hard drive as quick as possible (RE: 1000 CD’s will take days and I’m impatient). I’d also like this drive to read / copy SACD/DVDA. Install a media software program (not real sure which one to use). Install a kick ass sound card with two channel DAC’s that I can plug into my pre amp.

I’d then use this laptop only for CD playback and firmware updates for the rest of my A/V gear. I’d also use it for my display calibration software. The laptop would have to have RS232 because some of gear has RS232 and no USB.

Is this even possible??