Hard Drive vs. CD

[RVJII]

Ok, I've got an arguement going on with a friend regarding digital music and I'd like to get some opinions here. Right now I am using an Onkyo TX-NR900 as a pre/pro and to drive my center/surrounds. One thing that I love about this unit is that am able to use my home LAN to access all my music. What I have done is to copy all of my CD's, with NO compression, to a few large drives. (I use a very high quality program made by Polkisoft that utilizes extensive error checking, etc)

Anyway, he contends that the SQ from the disk cant be as good as the CD. I say that as long as you use a quality program that bits are bits. The CD is digital and so is the information coming off of the drive. Any thoughts on the science here?

On a side note, before doing all of this I did extensive research and found a double blind test that was done with a few hundered audiophiles and some very nice equipment. The result of the test was that even if you do compress music (ie. mp3) that 99% of people can't tell the difference as long as the data rate is 192kbps. (this would not be full mp3 compression) My point is that I have not compressed the music and the data rate is 1.4mbps (same as a CD).

I guess that I am just looking for any thoughts, opinions, or arguements either way.

[Steve@3dai]

Bits are bits. If there's no lossy compression, it's going to be the same. Might not SOUND the same, because the equipment is different, but the material will be the same.

[AsSiMiLaTeD]

Originally posted by Steve@3dai
Bits are bits. If there's no lossy compression, it's going to be the same. Might not SOUND the same, because the equipment is different, but the material will be the same.

I agree completely. The actual data (music) will remain the same, but the equipment will play a large factor in the overall outcome.

I will say (without having listened to the unit you speak of), that of the stuff I have listened to, the CD Player will have a better sound than a 'music center' with a hard drive. That's not to say that Onkyo, Marantz, or one of the other companies out there making these is not capable of producing a 'high-end' unit, just that I've not yet come across one of these (Although Marantz does have a unit with an 80 GB HDD for around $2000 that I've not yet been able to audition).

just my $.02

[wallstreet]

Ask your friend how the bits get to the CD.