The anachronistic CD Transport? And do I really need one.


CD Transports.

This is a machine that in my early audiophile days I could not afford. I appreciated, philosophically the advantages of it. Thinking of this device in 2021 seems strange. Yet they still exist and, maybe more importantly, they are still manufactured.

Just a few years ago (I dunno...maybe 2015) I remember thinking Redbook CD sounded great with the right DAC, and underlying system of course. But today, I don’t know this to be true. It is starting to seem that the compact disc is riding in the third row of the vehicle, with vinyl and non-cd-digital vying back and forth, musically for the driver’s seat.

So, my listening habits are

Vinyl 65% of the time
Digital 40%
CD 5%

I do have a small collection of CDs. They are things that I cannot easily or actually hear on other mediums.

I have a great DAC and it made an old (2005) Rotel CD player sound pretty good. The Rotel CD player's remote is dead with no easy replacement, and it does have progressive optical reading disease--...it drops in and out with less than perfectly clean discs.

Can you please evaluate the following options for me? Or tell me to piss off!

1. Buy a Transport
2. Buy a CD player (maybe with SACD ability)
3. Dump the discs and stick with your better sounding vinyl and digital.
4. Are you insane for listing as no. 1 "Buy a Transport"? You must be old.

Fire away.
128x128jbhiller
Get a Cambridge transport to play what you got.
Rip them and get a decent streamer/player.
I have the Cambridge CXC and run it to a BenchmarkDAC3 HGC and with this setup I find it's hard to hear the difference playing rebook CDs to playing SACDs through either a OPPO 105 or a Yamaha CD-S1000.
The audiolab cdt6000 or the Marantz hd CD-1. The Marantz is a player, but with a great transport. One more choice, the new vintage looking Leak cdt. Both the Leak and Marantz are compact, however good luck locating the Marantz, getting scarce as it is discontinued. Glad I got one years ago.
Since you already have a DAC you can use a DVD or blu-ray for a transport. Some even support SACD. Right now I am using a DVD player that got displaced with a blu-ray player in main system. To be honest I have played less than a dozen CDs on it in the past year. Mostly vinyl and streaming.
@ OP

The solution here is simple. 

Download CDEX to any computer with an optical media drive, and have CDEX rip your CD’s directly to FLAC. The resulting files will sound better through your media server and DAC anyway, so, your welcome. 

Also just saved you a bundle.