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Transports all sound the same...

cooky1257

pfm Member
I get most of my music via Squeezebox Touch or LP12 these days but still use my Meridian 506 now and again as a CD transport feeding BM Dac2-A/B comparisons with SBT usually ending in a too close to call(or the SBT tending to go a bit deeper).
I'd always liked the 506 and dropped it into the system when it was left to me, replacing a Teac T1 that had just had the drawer/gear wheel issue only partially repaired and for 2 years gone unused.
With time on my hands I fettled the T1 so it was functioning 100% and readied it for sale.
Last night in order to check all was well I swapped out the 506 and was very surprised at the improvement. Ambience, bandwidth and separation are all much improved-my system has never sounded better.
So, what to do now as A/B with the SBT show its playback to be significantly inferior.
 
Oooh, nice deaf troll magnet thread!

I agree entirely. A good transport sounds better than a poor one, and pretty much anything sounds better than streaming IMHO. Worth pointing out we are not using crap DACs here either; you have a Benchmark, I have a £2.5k Deltec and I've heard the same through some crazy expensive and seriously nice dCS kit too.

Let the flames begin! ;-)

PS I didn't rate the SBT at all, mine only lasted a couple of weeks before I sold it. No better than an AirPort Express, and that is known to have huge amounts of jitter. I just play the CDs and SACDs! I still rip them so I have a big catalogue for my iPhone and I'm future-proofing myself if I am ever forced to downsize (i.e. I still have my favourite music with no more than my MacBook and a pair of headphones).
 
Haha indeed, though it isn't my intention-I really wanted the 506 to be the winner as I have an emotional attachment/bias towards it. It could just be revelatory in just how good the T1 is when feeding the DAC2 I suppose....
 
I know the Teac has a reputation for being very good, though I'm surprised the Meridian is much worse, I'd expect that to be good too. I'm just using a Rega Apollo-R as transport, it would be interesting to try a dedicated unit. It certainly betters anything I can do with my Mac so far. That's not to say the Mac is bad, it just doesn't sound quite as smooth and solid.

How are you hooking stuff up? I tend to go with coax rather than optical working on the assumption it misses out the processing needed to translate it too and from light.

PS Waiting for someone to say Benchmark, Deltec and dCS aren't "competently designed DACs"!
 
Never understood the fascination with the SBT, I thought it sounded awful and was a bad design with flaky performance.

Have to say though I'm really impressed with the way the Roon streaming sounds, it's going from a Mac mini through a USB to spdif converter into an Audio Note DAC.
 
I know the Teac has a reputation for being very good, though I'm surprised the Meridian is much worse, I'd expect that to be good too. I'm just using a Rega Apollo-R as transport, it would be interesting to try a dedicated unit. It certainly betters anything I can do with my Mac so far. That's not to say the Mac is bad, it just doesn't sound quite as smooth and solid.

How are you hooking stuff up? I tend to go with coax rather than optical working on the assumption it misses out the processing needed to translate it too and from light.

PS Waiting for someone to say Benchmark, Deltec and dCS aren't "competently designed DACs".

I tried both optical and coax to try to trace the 'weakness' but to no avail. I'm happy with optical for now.
The 506 via analogue/it's own dac sounds very smooth and is an easy listen-a very pleasant piece of kit. The difference was immediate, the big JBL's not only disappearing in the horizontal plane but front to back too-this is a first with these speakers, their imaging now approaching that of the Arrays in the other system.
 
Were you comparing the analogue output of the two devices?
It might be more interesting to compare their digital output through the same dac, does the Meridian have dig out though?
Keith
 
Were you comparing the analogue output of the two devices?
It might be more interesting to compare their digital output through the same dac, does the Meridian have dig out though?
Keith

Unless I'm mistaken transports don't have analogue outputs.

Edit - looks like the Teac is a transport so is dig only but the 506 is a CDP so has analogue out as well as digital.
 
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I know the Teac has a reputation for being very good, though I'm surprised the Meridian is much worse, I'd expect that to be good too. I'm just using a Rega Apollo-R as transport, it would be interesting to try a dedicated unit. It certainly betters anything I can do with my Mac so far. That's not to say the Mac is bad, it just doesn't sound quite as smooth and solid.

How are you hooking stuff up? I tend to go with coax rather than optical working on the assumption it misses out the processing needed to translate it too and from light.

PS Waiting for someone to say Benchmark, Deltec and dCS aren't "competently designed DACs"!

Blimey, introducing a cable element to this thread, some just won't be able to resist!
 
Blimey, introducing a cable element to this thread, some just won't be able to resist!

Indeed! In this case however there are clear technological differences. Optical clearly requires further circuitry to convert the binary datastream into a light stream at one end and back again at the other, though does offer total electrical isolation from the source. FWIW my instinct is always to connect CD transports with coax and computers optically (i.e. isolate naff computer switch-mode PSUs etc from the hi-fi).
 
Well said cooky keep the Teac I used to have a Teac P-500 transport that was superb and sounded even better after having a Tent Labs master clock fitted. The only reason I got rid was because the laser went belly up.
 
I marginally prefer listening to FLAC files via a shuttle PC connected to my MDAC via USB (Olimex isolator in between) than CDs played back via a reasonably high end Pioneer LX55 Bluray player connected via optical. The PC via USB sounds very slightly smoother. A dedicated transport clock locked may reverse these differences though.
 


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