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Considering a HIgh End CD Transport Possibly Metronome Technologie

Yomanze said:
How much of this design do you think improves 'timing', and how much of it do you think is there to look good?

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...and what makes it technically better than, say: http://www.tentlabsshop.com/DetailServlet?detailID=3248
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It looks terrible in my opinion. I would be embarrassed to have it anywhere near my system. Pretentious in the extreme.
 
85k transport is for very rich but very rich people where 85k becomes 3k :)

you still need a DAC!

In this case you are paying more for the industrial design / looks rather than electronics which is fair if you are looking for to buy a statue, a piece of modern art in you living room...

i must admit it, i don't like the design but if i had fund to permit i would buy a cd transport for that kind of money, also if a person pays 85k for a cd transport does not need to prefer vs a kronos ring, he/she buys both!
 
I mentioned recently on another thread- in 2003 I heard a Meridian 592 DVD and their 507 CD into DSP speakers. Much to my surprise, the 592 was audibly, immediately superior over coax spdif into the DSP speakers so I bought it. I still have it and it still works.

Ive mainly used the analogue outputs of a Lindemann D680 SACD player over the last decade but I think I'll have a shootout between it, the 592DVD, an old Phillips CD850 mkII and a couple of cheap BDPs I've got lying around. I can try coax, optical and AES/EBU balanced into a Devialet. One problem is my ears are nothing like as good as they were in 2003.

Has anyone tried this with their fancy cdp and cheap BDP?
 
Julf said:
Do you mean lower jitter, or something else?
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I found this article to be fairly useful in gathering together a few ideas about CD transports and why they may make a difference. It's from Sound On Sound (March 2016). Apologies if it's been posted before.

"A common problem is a susceptibility to mechanical and acoustical vibrations, which cause tracking and focus errors leading to uncorrectable data errors. There’s also the issue of power-rail fluctuation that I mentioned previously, and it may also have less than perfect clocking and so introduce interface jitter in the S/PDIF output. Of course, a good external DAC should be able to remove any interface jitter, but it can’t do anything if the data itself has already been corrupted through the use of error concealment."

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It also quotes a related (older) article from Prism Sound which ruminated on the role of power supplies in the quality of CD playback.

"The sensitivity of the reference terminal of most DAC chips is not sufficiently respected by most designers. It seems that this problem may actually be getting worse as we approach the DVD age. The application notes of some (so-called) 24-bit/96kHz DAC chips for DVD use, for example [6], show the reference fed directly from a power-rail shared by digital (and possibly servo) electronics with only minimal filtering, which would be ineffective at low frequencies."

I currently use a Lite Audio LT-One CD transport to a Lite Audio DAC83 decoder. Connection options are multiple, but I currently get the most enjoyable sound either via I2S (using a Blue Jeans ethernet cable) or even better - surprisingly to me - the toslink option, using a Lifatec glass toslink cable.

I have multiple spare mechanisms for the transport, for future use.
 
Reduced data errors could explain why one CDT sounds better than another CDT, but not why a CDT would sound better than a computer transport (which has no data errors).

The only other physical differences I can think of are:
- jitter
- noise via power/ground
- RFI
and of course
- psychological bias if listening sighted
 
darrenyeats said:
Reduced data errors could explain why one CDT sounds better than another CDT, but not why a CDT would sound better than a computer transport (which has no data errors).

The only other physical differences I can think of are:
- jitter
- noise via power/ground
- RFI
and of course
- psychological bias if listening sighted
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...that's the thing, properly implemented, no CD transport has a chance against a computer-based transport. If the computer sounds worse it'll be down to jitter, clock drift and power line noise issues.

I was a staunch believer in the superiority of CDTs over computers (despite being a very early computer audio adopter with the HagUSB), until asynchronous USB came along... my unit measures at 10ps jitter and 25ps clock drift, which is about as low as it gets, and for under £1000 including a dedicated power supply & building a custom media server.

What is interesting though is that implementing USB inputs in DACs appears to have its own issues i.e. many reports of people getting better results from taking USB to SPDIF conversion off-board instead of using built-in inputs. At its extreme, my DAC designer has two versions of his DAC, one SPDIF version and one USB version, because according to him they both have different design requirements.
 
darrenyeats said:
What unit is that Yomanze?
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BNC version of the Halide Bridge with an AQVOX power supply. DAC is the Audial Model S. The DAC uses no reclocking, just the PLL of the receiver chip, so is transport-sensitive & responds well to an ultra-low jitter source.
 
hairyderriere said:
I found this article to be fairly useful in gathering together a few ideas about CD transports and why they may make a difference.
Click to expand...

So yes, jitter - that some DACs are sensitive to, and others less so, and reclocking/buffering addresses it pretty well.
 
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