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Expensive CD transport vs cheap DVD player

Toshiba did a cheap as chips dvd player many moons ago that spat out a perfect spdif square wave, internal fifo buffer equipped for under £70.
 
Will watch that later but i often find dvd or blu ray players have drive noise which is intolerable . Much prefer to use a cd player as transport
 
Could have done with a few torture tracks instead of well recorded Patricia Barber that probably sounds the same on anything.
 
sq225917 said:
Toshiba did a cheap as chips dvd player many moons ago that spat out a perfect spdif square wave, internal fifo buffer equipped for under £70.
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I remember there was a buzz about that player years ago. A friend brought one over but it didn't sound as good as a decent CD player acting as a transport.

I can't pretend to know why but I've found that different disk spinners do sound different. So far the best I've tried is the Rega Saturn-R CD player. Next are old Philips swing-arm CD players. The differences can be subtle but significant, enough to make you want to keep listening or turn the music off.
 
A can of worms, this.
Differences between CD players are minuscule when compared to analogue setups I find. The basic sound is obviously identical, with detail retrieval and imaging being the real criteria that set players apart. The huge price of some posh players is probably not really justified.
 
I've got a couple of DVD universal players I use for SACD - one's a Sony and the other an Arcam. When playing CD's and using the same DAC I don't hear a lot of difference between them and the Audiolab transport I normally use in that system.
 
I am a CD only audiophile… that occasionally uses Tidal, so this topic really interests me.

To me well designed and built CD players are the way do go, for sound, ergonomics, pleasure of use, aesthetics and value. The Rega Saturn (which I still have the MkI version) is one fine example of a very balanced machine in everything aspect.
The above aspects are also important in every piece of gear that I bough.
We using a dac, I prefer a CD transport (or streamer transport) to keep things in the same page. Both have their own independent power supply and are optimized for a single funtion.

That said, I stick to brands with good engineering and design and stop think about it.
The experience of use is hugely important for me and because of that I couldn’t use a (cheap) DVD player… but neither could I spend more that $2500 in a piece of gear, because that is were the good value is.
The Ayon mentioned in the video, looks like one of those low value components, and I wished Guido did compared it with other more affordable CD transports or CD players, from Rega, Cyrus, Moon Audio… or even the new Shanling ET-3 CD transport, that sells for less that $900.

I am just sharing my point of view and am not trying to teach anyone about this matter.
 
I can't remember, but it's tested on that eastern European valve dac guys website, can't remember his name either
 
I suspect that many modern DACs will show very little difference between transports, but my first DAC, a 1991 Audio Alchemy DDE v1, was quite sensitive.
 
tuga said:
I suspect that many modern DACs will show very little difference between transports, but my first DAC, a 1991 Audio Alchemy DDE v1, was quite sensitive.
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I also had that dac. It was my first lesson in how the quality of the dac power supply can markedly affect the sound of the dac.

I admit I no longer use a cd transport but when I did there were audible differences between the ones that I owned. The most recent being a Chord Blu mk2 cd transport. The challenge after that transport was to find a streamer that sounded as good. And so the journey continues . . .
 
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