looking for the best cd transport only, without dac


I have a Hegel H160 with inbuilt DAC and I'm looking for cd transport recommendation for $1000 or so. I have Harbeth SHL5 + and like an open and transparent sound. I've considered PS Audio PWT and other used options. I'm currently using my $75 Sony bluray player for transport and surprised how good it sounds. I've auditioned transports like Marantz and Cambridge. Options like Primare and Audionote I have't been able to listen to, the latter ones used to get closer to price point. There is also the Oppo 203, but wonder about quality of sound sacrifices in jack of all trades box? When I have compared the few transports I've tried the sound quality differences were quite subtle. So have people here done some serious comparisons of sound quality of just transports and have any great recommendations? Thanks
ckharbeth

gdhal - can you hear any difference when you use different S/PDIF coax cables?

If so, then the transport jitter still matters.  It does with most DACs.

The very few DAC's where it doesn't have any effect are not very good sounding IMO, because of the reclocking inside.

Steve N.

Empirical Audio

gdhal - can you hear any difference when you use different S/PDIF coax cables?

If you mean differences between optical, AES/EBU and RCA coax, yes, I can hear a difference. Within those, to be perfectly honest I haven’t tried different types of optical cable, AES/EBU or RCA coax.

If so, then the transport jitter still matters. It does with most DACs.

How do you know that it matters with most DACs? The URLs you’ve provided (that I’ve seen) to your measurement data (again, outstanding work on your part) are *before* the DAC. Are you stating there is measurement data available *after* the DAC (via SE or XLR output) and therefore already converted to analog that indicates (never mind proves) there is better analog, as a result of less incoming digital jitter?

The very few DAC’s where it doesn’t have any effect are not very good sounding IMO, because of the reclocking inside.

So are you saying that DACs that are immune to incoming jitter are not good sounding? And further, the reason they are not good sounding is because of the DACs reclocking? At face value and in my mind this wouldn’t make sense because seemingly all of the quality DACs do some kind of reclocking (or at a minimum "re" something or other with the incoming digital).
How do you know that it matters with most DACs?

I modded many DACs for 10 years, I have played with customers DACs and I have heard many DACs at trade shows for 15 years.

So are you saying that DACs that are immune to incoming jitter are not good sounding? And further, the reason they are not good sounding is because of the DACs reclocking?

This is my experience.  With the Sabre D/A's for instance, it usually sounds better if you can avoid the reclocking by bypassing it.  The reason for this is simple: most internal reclocking implementations are not that low in jitter. Not the 10-15psec like you can get with a free-running clock.

You are correct however, that many DACs use reclocking of some sort internally so that the source jitter is less important. The problem is that most of the reclockers use PLL to synchronize to the incoming stream.  A PLL clock can NEVER have the low jitter possible with a free-running clock.  

Another method is to re-sample the data.  After using many upsampling chips over the years, I discovered that only one of them is good enough to deliver low jitter, and I use that one in my Synchro-Mesh.  Then there is the clock quality, clock power delivery and implementation which all affect the jitter. The clock quality, implementation and power delivery may be very good in a Vivaldi DAC, but probably not that great in a $3K DAC.

There are a few examples where there is a possibility that an internal clock could be good enough in a reclocker to delivery really low jitter.  In these cases, they use a "bang-bang" type of clocking where the clock is actually free-running, but it switches between a slightly higher frequency clock and a slightly lower frequency clock in order to "bracket" the incoming frequency.  The data is buffered in a FIFO and the frequency changes prevent overrun and underrun.  The change between these two frequencies may happen every few seconds.  In order to achieve really low jitter, the circuit would need 12 custom oscillators for the 6 sample-rates.  Each of these would have to be slightly higher or lower than the nominal frequency.  Each of these would need to be low-jitter oscillators with independent power regulation.  This is certainly possible, but I'm not aware of any DAC on the planet that uses this scheme.  It would be very expensive.  I implemented a circuit like this in a product I called the "Pace-Car", which is obsolete now.  Rather than using 12 oscillators, I used two and "pulled" their frequency slightly from the nominal.  It was good, but pulling the frequency from it's nominal to be slightly higher and lower is not optimum and probably adds jitter.

Steve N.

Empirical Audio

Heard, repaired, upgraded more than 50 transports.  The Project was the best of the bunch, simply no contest.  The Jays is very good but a different sound.  Rega Saturn a cheaper alternative and especially once modified.  We have compared the streamers from Auralic and Aurender and while they also sound good, the Project transport was simply better.  I also know the modified Flatfish.  Brian Charney had one.  Excellent but you will need to invest a lot of money to get it there as stated above.  The cheaper recommendations above our good players but just do not produce the sound quality of the better transports.

Happy Listening.