Differences between cd transports?


Howdy,I borrowed a dedicated CD transport (Musical Fidelity) from a friend. I have found that music sounds much better with his transport than with the CD player I’ve been using to spin CDs. In both cases, I am using exactly the same DAC via the optical out connection from the transport and the CD player. So: is there any rational reason that, using the same digital to analog converter, one CD spinner should sound much better than another?Thanks!  
rebbi
I think, if like 2 yrs ago at RMAF when Geoff beamed himself down to Earth that weekend. He may even do that this year at the new place. So you may not  have to get a ticket to space to go see him. 
Rebbi, good to see you here again! It has been a while.

Regarding your quest for an explanation of what could account for the sonic differences you found to occur between the optically connected CD player and the optically connected transport, I think that the posts early in the thread by Kijanki and Mapman pretty nearly said it all. And I agree with their comments 100%.

I would add one more possibility, though, to the two they cited (those having been timing jitter and read errors, with jitter being the more likely culprit if the player and disc are in good condition). It seems conceivable to me that in some cases sonics might be affected by differences in the amplitude and spectral characteristics of digital noise at RF frequencies that might find its way via power wiring (or perhaps even via the air) from those components to downstream points in the system.

A number of other well intentioned responses, especially early in the thread, asserted that differences in the design and quality of various parts of the players, such as power supplies, laser mechanisms, digital circuitry, etc., could account for the differences you perceived. I don’t doubt that those assertions are correct in many cases. But understandably such assertions fall short of explaining ***how*** differences in those things end up affecting sonics. And the only means I can envision by which such differences in design can affect sonics, given that ground loops, impedance mismatches, signal reflection effects, and other such things that can come into play when electrical (rather than optical) interconnections are used, is by having effects on jitter, or on read errors, or on coupling of electrical noise to downstream points in the system via pathways that are unintended and non-obvious.

All the best,
-- Al
@tweak1 No, my head would not explode when visiting Synergistic Research. If they have more than $1K of instruments in that two garage spot "warehouse" of theirs. If a single cable company ever published a study, I'd buy into their BS. And please don't tell me you can't measure this. I own a laser doppler vibrometer good to 100kHz. I'm sure your ears are more accurate than that. But no matter how many times I've pointed it at a tweeter, no matter what cable, it always shows the same thing when fed same wave. Funny how not one cable company seems to own a device like that. I suspect most of them don't even own a decent multimeter.
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Curious the number of persons who want to argue about the merits of cable vs toslink even though the initial poster is using toslink with both transports.  So this is irrelevant. 

That said, the cable crowd seem to think there is only one kind of toslink,  when there is a wide range. Yes a $2.00 toslink may sound worse than a $100.00 cable.  I personally like Wireworld Toslink  which was about $80.00.