Anyone using their Jolida JD 100 as a transport?

As a former owner of the JD100, I am one of the very few who was not impressed with it at all. I tried several different tubes, power cables, and IC's, but to no avail -- it still sounded lifeless and bloated to me.

For a more detailed and dynamic sound, you could hardly go wrong with an Arcam, even their entry level cd73 packs tons of detail. For all the improvements of an Arcam player with true musicality and finesse, try a Rega Planet, or better yet, a Jupiter.

Pdreher, what tubes have you tried? Have you tried a PC? This player responds very well to both.

It's an acceptable Transport. I used mine to feed either my Pre/Pro or a Theta DSPro for a while. Though the tube output was my preferred source and its a fine one at that.

I have no experience with the Jolida, so I don't know if my recommendation will increase dynamics or detail in your system, but you might want to look into a combination of the Audio Mirror D1 DAC which costs $500 new, connected via Acoustic Zen MC2 used for around $170 on Audiogon.

I find this duo presents a big soundstage while being both dynamic, detailed, but not hyper-detailed, and also possessing a decently fleshed out midrange. This DAC is not as detailed as the more neutral sounding Ack! dAck! 2.0 which is also worth a look, but costing slightly more.

I considered using the Jolida JD-100 with my Audio Mirror D1 DAC ($500 new, but I own two and may have a used one for sale in a couple months depending on some upgrading I'm doing) but decided to go with a straight transport. I use the VH Audio Pulsar IC and the combination should run you no more than $700.

I'd sell the Jolida since it's something that will always have a buyer used and you could get decent money for it. What makes it good is it's output stage, so using it as a transport seems like a waste.