What is the best transport?

Could I interest you in a Victrola?

Spending 16-18K on a transport in the year 2012?

There might even be a blurb in the Farmers Almanac regarding the demise of the CD. Nostradamus predicted 2014.

changeout, I am likely i the minority here. However, I think really good transport is tough to beat. Have you considered the dCS transports? The dCS Paganini transport is right at your price point (17k usd)

I run a dCS Puccini and U clock currently and hope to move up to their separates soon...

01-27-12: Branislav
I wonder what the advantages of PS Audio PWT transport is compared to just saving your cds in your computer...
Branislav (Threads | Answers | This Thread)

I think the advantage is with PWT, data is stored in SS memory so it avoids reading data from the hard drive into memory before transmission.

LAMPIZATOR has a wifi memory transport that I'm going to demo once my dealer gets one in.

What is a digital file? A file n bytes long. A byte is 8 bits. A bit can be a 0 or 1. So you basically have a file of 0 and 1. The only requirement is this file needs to be loaded into memory before it can be processed and doesn't care how.

What is one of the most expensive operation for a computer? Interfacing with an external peripheral such as a hard drive or worst a CD drive. So the logical implementation is preload the data into memory before processing. This will eliminate the engineering required to sychronize the data transmission and cost ... loading a file into memory is a trivial task. Don't need the over priced transports, clocks ... this means less profits for the companies.

I think in the future, our music collection will be stored in a Cloud and could be access from anywhere with internet. But with ULTRA LOW demand for audiophile grade audio, it doesn't attract the $$, best and brightest so advances will be SLOW compare to video.

"But with ULTRA LOW demand for audiophile grade audio, it doesn't attract the $$, best and brightest so advances will be SLOW compare to video."

I would not be so sure about this. I have seen the RMAF show grow a lot in the last few years even with the recession, and prices on speakers and components have skyrocketed. There have to be buyers for $100K speakers and amplifiers or manufacturers would not bother doing them. It's that top 1% that is willing to spend the big bux that is driving a lot of of high-end audio now. These people want convenience and sound quality too, so many of them are converting to computer audio. They tend to be tech-savvy anyway.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

I have to say it took me a while, and for many of the reasons mentioned here by those who still favor the transport/DAC set-up. There was a time I was pretty overwhelmed with the various computer audio options. I happen to have what I consider to be a very nice digital front end featuring a CEC TL51X transport slaved to a Lessloss DAC 2004 MKII. I have enjoyed this set-up for about 5 years.

Recently I acquired a Resolution Audio Cantata and put together a very simple computer audio set-up using my MacBook, Pure Music, and an Oyen Digital Mini Pro 1TB HD. I used XLD to rip about 300 CDs to the HD using AIFF. Then I use the Asynch USB interface on the Cantata and run Pure Music in hog mode with memory playback. The sound is excellent IMO and with the Cantata, which also allows one to play CDs, I can A/B the USB input against the CD input. I can't tell a difference. So for convenience purposes I have predominantly been using the computer as my transport.

The transport/DAC combo are in the closet for the time being.

Disclaimer: I am a Resolution Audio dealer.