Last night I went to Bestbuy and bought a decent Sony DVD/CD single disc player, analog output has S/N of 115dB, cd dynamic range 96dB, and 0.003% THD. I tried about 10 to 15 music cds and few mp3 cdr switching back and forth between the Sony and my computer, after 4 to 5 hours of messing around, to my surprise I found absolutely NO difference in SQ!! Another shocker is that my Soundblaster live 5.1 sound just as clean as the Sony, NO audible interference whatsoever, and the S/N ratio appears to be identical as well.
My conclusion is:
1)either the Sony DVD/CD player is absolutely crap,
2)or using computer with decent soundcard as the source, is just as good as many mass-market dvd/cd players out there.
needless to say, I took the Sony DVD/CD player back today and get my money back, next thing I'm going to try is to buy the M-Audio Revolution soundcard, this soundcard is being praise and prefer by many HTPC users, was told it really outshine the Soundblaster in music and dvd playing, and that it has far superior DAC that rival many high-end DVD or CD player out there...
