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Expensive CD transport vs cheap DVD player

Salamander said:
I can't take his findings seriously. We demo'd three cd transports, you really didn't have to have golden ears to spot the differences. I remember using a dvd player as a stop gap, replacing with a cdt made a huge improvement.
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once used a panasonic dvd player as a stop gap.
Then changed to a marantz cd6000ose, didnt expecting the difference to be so huge,(jr149,34,306)
 
Salamander said:
@sq225917 Have you heard a difference between transports?
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Way back when, yes. In the last 10 years, nope. And I certainly wouldn't consider any modern dac that sounded different with different transports.

My 30 year old audiolab cdm8000 sounds the same on ies and spdif and sounds the same as my mac, or fiio m15 over usb I to the same dac.
 
sq225917 said:
Found it, it was the pioneer dv-300

goldmundizator

www.lampizator.eu
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I bought one of these many moons ago to use as a transport but never got around to using it as such, I still have it, will do the mod 'lampizator' that's if it still powers up!
I'm currently using a Pioneer PD-S 703 as a transport at the mo, see if the dv-300 sounds any better.
 
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I’ve done a small survey of using CD players as stand alones and as transports. For example, a Densen 400 XS used as a transport with a Benchmark dac sounded like a far worse version of itself, which I was not expecting.

One of my conclusions is get a good player and keep signal paths short, or spend lots of money on transport/dac.
 
Using a marantz sa6005 as a transport , its good .i read folks who have moved from 6000 cdt to 9000cdt having an improvement . Cant afford anything better than the sa8005 but hope to get a 260dt or the tec 701t at some point
 
Gosh - every DAC I've ever owned has been a poorly engineered piece crap, as I have heard far from subtle differences in using different transports with all of them - this goes for more modern streaming sources as well :)
 
sq225917 said:
Way back when, yes. In the last 10 years, nope. And I certainly wouldn't consider any modern dac that sounded different with different transports.

My 30 year old audiolab cdm8000 sounds the same on ies and spdif and sounds the same as my mac, or fiio m15 over usb I to the same dac.
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You must try a Google ChromeCast Audio.
 
sq225917 said:
Way back when, yes. In the last 10 years, nope. And I certainly wouldn't consider any modern dac that sounded different with different transports.

My 30 year old audiolab cdm8000 sounds the same on ies and spdif and sounds the same as my mac, or fiio m15 over usb I to the same dac.
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Well cdt's don't all sound the same to us, I will not blame the dac for that, how can you? How can you think a £20 cd/dvd player can compete with £10k's worth of cd transport, but that is what you are saying. You wouldn't expect a cheap record deck to compete with some of the expensive offerings that are available nowadays. For us different inputs may or may not offer a subtle change, we have found AES generally performs best.
 
You're assuming a 10k transport is technically any better than a cheaper one, rather than just in a fancy box with more margin and lacking economies of scale.

As long as the cheap one hits the protocol spec theres no reason it should sound any different. If it doesn't meet spec then all bets are off. Just like if the expensive one doesn't reach spec.

Your perfectly entitled to hear whatever you want, I'm not saying anything about what anyone else hears. Only what I hear with my kit.

Amazingly even a cheap dvd player can get a higher bandwidth and data rate right, without drop out or glitching, yet some think cd transports can't manage a less taxing version of the same thing.. you wouldn't keep a broken dvd player, why would we accept a transport that can't achieve spec?

If the eye pattern is within spec there really is nothing else to discuss.
 
@sq225917 The only advice I can give you, if your dac is making all sources (cheap to expensive) sound the same it is now time to buy yourself a more competent dac, think of it as a phono stage, the more thought you put into building it the better sound comes out.

Let's move on, this is a cd transport thread.
 
sq225917 said:
You're assuming a 10k transport is technically any better than a cheaper one, rather than just in a fancy box with more margin and lacking economies of scale.

As long as the cheap one hits the protocol spec theres no reason it should sound any different. If it doesn't meet spec then all bets are off. Just like if the expensive one doesn't reach spec.

Your perfectly entitled to hear whatever you want, I'm not saying anything about what anyone else hears. Only what I hear with my kit.

Amazingly even a cheap dvd player can get a higher bandwidth and data rate right, without drop out or glitching, yet some think cd transports can't manage a less taxing version of the same thing.. you wouldn't keep a broken dvd player, why would we accept a transport that can't achieve spec?

If the eye pattern is within spec there really is nothing else to discuss.
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I've no wish to be impolite, but this sort of twaddle does get a bit wearing after a while

If only I were able to recommend a website where everyone would share your point of view 😉
 
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