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Know of any good contemporary CD transports that work well into a DAC made by Naim?

Not sure about use with a Naim DAC but I compiled a list of recommended transports from a recent thread, might give you food for thought.

Cambridge CXC £250-300
Tascam cd 500b £500 SLOT
Audiolab 6000cdt 400 SLOT

Bel Canto transports CD2/CD3 £1500
Jay's Audio CDT2 MK2 £1895
Gato CDD1


PS AUDIO Direct Stream Memory Player £5999
My initial preference was for a Chord Blu 3k or a simaudio Moon Neo260d 1.5-2k

Never had the exposure recommended, looks very good and a top loader.
 
Projekt have a CD transport CD Box RS 2 at £2.1k, which won an EISA award and an outstanding rating in Hifi news.

There is a matching dac at £1750, so more funds have gone into the transport side.

Dont know about a pairing with Naim sonically, but it has digital outputs.
 
Why current production only, a late CDX2 would still be supported and keep in in the family.
Personally I didn’t fancy ripping 1000 CDs on a computer but wanted to make room for more vinyl in the living room so bought a Core. There is the need to edit the metadata of the odd rip but it mostly gets it right and does a very good job of feeding a Naim DAC, via SPdif or ethernet. It was very good into a Rega DAC-r too via a Belden 4794R from Bluejeans.
 
Hum - ok, you got me there.
But I do hate redundancy.

Did they really spend a lot more on the transport than the dac and analog stage?

have you tried it with a Naim streamer?

The XM CD was originally conceived as a transport. The price for the complete player is basically the same as the projected price when it was to be just a transport.

I have not tried it with a Naim streamer myself, but I have sold them to customers using Naim DACs. I have tried it with plenty of other outboard DACs and streamers, including the Auralic Vega G1 and G2, Mytek Brooklyn Bridge, Matrix Audio Element X and Exogal Comet. I have also tried it with the Hegel H390 and H590 integrated amplifiers, both of which have rather good built-in DACs. Add a decent BNC to BNC 75 Ohm coax cable and it will work very nicely with your NAC-N 272.
 
I have a Naim DAC but I've ripped all my CDs (about 50) to an Apple MacBook Air with Apple Lossless. I've also got the option selected to go back and reread any bad sectors, can transports do that? I then use an optical link to the DAC via a Behringer 202 which hopefully minimises problems with electrical noise.

It sounds brilliant with the right recording, better than my LP12. Unfortunately good digital recordings are rare things IMHO. The recordings I'm thinking of are BB King "Blues on the Bayou" and a Harmonia Mundi recording of Schubert's Winterreise.
 
what you want is a transport that reads CD's like a PC rips them, ie with extensive re-reads, big buffering and maximal error correction. The first Transport to do that was the Tag Mclaren DVD32R, but don't get one of them since they're old and mightily unreliable, then came the Audiolab 8200 series (same idea) and now the higher up project transports seem to do it, but then again so will any old PC with an SPdiff output so why pay a lot. You don't actually need to rip the CD's most if the time. If the disk is relatively error free the PC can play it in real time. If it isn't rip it and re burn it!
 
How old?

The G08 certrainly did/does (that's now been around a fairly long time)

the 800 series reference transports also do, they're all based on DVD transports.

The linn Majik is also of the same type.

Nowadays you're almost certainly getting a small Linux PC with a DVD transport but older designs may have more bespoke OS's, Naim use embedded MS Windoze! It's all pretty much the same idea though.

Tag were just the first to do it ( I think - very late 90's?) and subsequently quite a few others (connected and otherwise) have cottoned on
 
I have a Naim DVD5 connected by SPdif to my streamer, I think I’ve used it once or twice to play a CD mostly I just rip them to the Core.
 
How old?

The G08 certrainly did/does (that's now been around a fairly long time)

the 800 series reference transports also do, they're all based on DVD transports.

I was just curious, wondering whether that technique went back as far as the the venerable Meridian 500, but it was probably the 800 that i was thinking of.

.....Naim use embedded MS Windoze!...

Probably Windoze 3..... :D:D:D
 
How about a Bel Canto CD3t? I just had a nice clean one in black finish traded in. It has S/PDIF coaxial (BNC) and AES outputs. Absolutely no analogue outputs or other frills. It comes with the original packaging and remote. Yours for £800.
 
How about a Bel Canto CD3t? I just had a nice clean one in black finish traded in. It has S/PDIF coaxial (BNC) and AES outputs. Absolutely no analogue outputs or other frills. It comes with the original packaging and remote. Yours for £800.
Thanks for the offer, Lee.

It is tempting.

CDs as NAS.

Just put in a silver frisbee, sit down - and listen to the whole of Spillane by Albert Collins and John Zorn (without the pernicious presence of a screen anywhere near my hand or face).

 


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