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Reference Transports: An overall perspective

Teajay did a great job by starting a threat called "Reference DACS: An overall perspective."
I thought it might be beneficial to start a similar thread on transports.
Unfortunately I really have nothing much to say; I just hoped to get the ball rolling.

I'll start by throwing out a few names and a question:

Zanden 2000
CEC TL-0X
Metronome Kalista; T2-i Signature; and T2-A
Esoteric P-01; and P-03(?)
EMM Labs CDSD
47Labs PiTracer
Weiss Jason
Accustic Arts Drive 1
Ensemble Dirondo
Wadia 270se

I know that there are very few companies that actually make the drives themselves. The few I know about are:
Philips
TEAC
Sanyo/CEC

Do the various Philips drives or the TEAC VRDS transport mechanism each have a particular sonic signature regardless of which maunufacturer uses them in their designs?
exlibris
mburnstein
60 posts
 
Richard, can you tell us about the CDP-R3?
Thanks
Mark
ubglub
76 posts
 
I've heard that the current problem with CD transports is that one or two companies have a monopoly on the production of the requisite laser mechanisms, which are poorly made and have a high rate of failure. Due to this lack of options even the best gear ends up having to employ cheap lasers. Furthermore, the manufacturer changes the laser design every year. Therefore, someone building a transport needs to buy a huge backstock of the lasers all at once in order to be able to offer a warrantee service, and also factor in the cost and problems associated with repairing many failed units.
Is there someone knowledgeable who can comment on this?
tmhaudio
122 posts
 
Henryhk:
Yes, lots of great transports/DACS originate from Japan. But as the NA distributor of the French Metronome, I must state the T2-i Sig is a world Class-A transport/DAC in 2 chassis. The even more stunning 2-chassis Kalista transport (in sound & aesthetics) w/separate Power Supply was recently compared to vinyl in 6moons.com review - perhaps the highest compliment one could receive to achieve analog purity & resolution.
henryhk
648 posts
 
Tmhaudio: Of course...I was just citing a general tendency, nothing more and it was more of a casual observation not a statement per se. I actually did listen to a Metronome CD player (one box) last year and found it excellent indeed. So the higher set up which you describe should certainly be excellent as well I would imagine.
lktanx
21 posts
 

In a modern properly designed player, transports should make no difference to the sound. Here is an example of why this is the case:

Take any cheapo transport for $10, read the data from the CD/DVD/SACD into RAM. Use the cleanest possible clock reference and read the data from this RAM for further processing. Hence you get perfect data with the cleanest possible clock.

An Ipod Nano has this type of "transport" or non-transport. Of course other design elements of the Nano makes it non-reference such as the compression of the data and the inexpensive output processing. But it does have a perfect "transport".
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