If you still spin CD's their is a reference level Transport for reasonable money


I just got in-house the Jay's Audio CDT-2 MK3 transport to review for hometheaterreview.com.  The build quality and physical appearance make it hard to believe that it retails for around $2,400.  Right out of the crate not even broken in yet, it's out performing my CEC double belt transport in the reference system.  It retains all the liquidity and analog smoothness of the belt driven transport but offers more details, tighter bass frequencies, and a larger layered soundstage with more air between the players.

Alvin, of Vinshine Audio set this review up with me, so if you go to his website you can get a lot more details/pictures on this transport.  The reason I was motivated to review a CD transport was I received scores of requests from my readers asking what is a great sounding transport, for a reasonable amount of money.  So far, in spades the Jay's Audio CDT-2 MK3 fits the bill easily.   
teajay
The Jay's Audio DAC has just been released!

If it is anywhere nearly as good as the CDT2 it will be fantastic. Same beautiful casing.
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I’ve created a new thread for the Jay’s Audio DAC as it’s unrelated to teajay’s original thread. 
Just ordered a CDT2-MK2 from Mike Powell in GA. Had a good chat with him this morning. My current player is just a TASCAM 500b which, hooked to an Yggdrasil (new Analog 2 board) via AES, has surpassed every expectation I had for CD playback. So I'm curious what an anecdotally world-class transport will sound like by comparison.

I've been on a vinyl bender for 3 years and for my tastes and preferences it offers what I want in terms of smooth, powerful sound with excellent dynamics and tonal texture. For reference, my vinyl rig is: GEM PolyTable Super12, AT Art9 with Namiki boron MicroRidge, into a Parks Puffin phono stage (which frankly sounds better than it has any right to given how it works and its price tag). Previous phono stage was a Herron VTPH-2. 

Anyway, I digress. I was shocked to find that the TASCAM + Yggy has delivered a few discs that I have on comparable, excellent condition, original vinyl and I preferred the shiny plastic. There are others that overlap in my two collections where I prefer the vinyl, so at no point am I thinking I want to switch completely, I just want to have roughly equivalent sources for both media. And I have also determined that I am now firmly in the camp of physical media. I have Roon and I have tried a MicroRendu as well as a HifiBerry and neither have come close to what I'm getting with a CD of the same provenance.

Should have the Jay's in a couple weeks, can't wait to see how it sounds.
I purposefully did not compare the Jay's Audio CDT2 MK2 with my analog rigs (VPI Prime and two Linn LP12 set-ups having different arm/cartridge combinations).

The SQ commonalities between my CD and LP playback front ends include an incredibly silent background and a huge 3-dimensional sound space.