direct play to USB

[hifinet]

I've been upgrading DACs since the 2003 Squeezebox, which sounded better than the moderately priced older CD player. I thought ripping CDs with EAC was a better solution to reliably extract the data. At the time, I was marking the edges of the CD with a permanent black felt tip marker. For the one and only time, I was single blind tested by a doubting audiophile friend, I got 6 for 6 (reject null hypothesis with greater than two SDs, I think). I was listening for a specific character, blacker background. Met another audiophile at the time who was cutting 45 degree edges in CDs. So I think this was reducing internal reflections and misreads in the single read CD players of the time.