2. digital
  3. 147783-122613

Is a CD Transport the Best Digital Source?

So I’ve gone back and forth between CD players/transports, Blu-Ray/DVD players, computers, phones, and more for my digital source, but I always seem to end up going back to CD for the best sound I can get out of my system. I find that I enjoy mixing it up and enjoy the sound of each source, but when it comes down to what is the absolute best in my system, I just keep going back to a CD player or CD transport.

For awhile I though my laptop streaming digital to a DAC was my best source until I went back to a CD transport and realized that everything was “crisper,” especially the bass. The bass and midbass seem like they are more in unison, hit harder and hit quicker (less mush). 

Does anyone find this to be the case and why is this? Is it just an economics problem, e.g. dollar for dollar a dedicated CD player has more of its costs sunk into music playing compared to a computer which is also built for running an OS, playing video, etc.?

Bonus question: Why does bass get better with better gear? It seems to me that bass would be the easiest to reproduce for a DAC. It’s this big, slow wave that is massively oversampled for what is needed. I would think any improvements would be up in the treble where you are near the Nyquist frequency and have to deal with phase-effects of low pass filters, etc. 
128x128mkgus
dgarretson
2,601 posts
 

@jim204 Interesting that the JCAT USB card made a major improvement for you.  I have a JCAT NET Femto ethernet card on order for installation in a QNAP i5 NAS that hosts Roon core in conjunction with SOtM EN-to-USB endpoints.  I'll try powering the JCAT externally with either a SOtM or Chinese Zerozone PS.  If that goes well, I may try comparing a JCAT USB card in the QNAP to the SOtM pieces-- which in my system are souped up with a Hynes SR7 linear power supply and clock links to a 10mhz master clock that also synchronizes the Esoteric DAC.

So far my computer audio set-up equals or surpasses my Esoteric K-01X transport.  The performance of computer audio implementations vary widely-- which is reflected in the wide variation of responses on this topic.

falconquest's avatar
falconquest
1,108 posts
 
Gee, and I just load a CD and enjoy the music!
melm
1,083 posts
 
I found that ripped CDs played from a hard disk or NAS through a laptop to a stand alone DAC sounded better than CDs played through an Oppo 105 to the same DAC. But YMMV. It’s always system synergy. 

And, of course, there's always the joy of ripped SACDs which sound way better than through the Oppo alone.

As for bass response. IMO, all things being equal, that almost always has to do with better power supply.
jim204
881 posts
 
@dgarretson   Yes the JCat Femto did make a heck of a difference to my enjoyment of files through my PC. That said what I usually do is either rip a CD to my RAM Drive with Exact Audio Copy and sometimes I tweak it with Sony Sound Forge 12 and play it from my Ram and when I am satisfied with it I then save it to SSD drives which are expensive at the moment but they sure do beat the old platter drives for permanent storage. I also download from streams and copy them to my Ram with Sound tap which records anything which is playing on your desktop. That way I am now able to get all the files I want for the price of a subscription to a streaming company. The recordings made are virtualy indistinguishable to the stream itself. If there are any anomolies at all then I can tune it through Sound Forge to sound how I like . All this does seem simple but you have to strip your Windows operating system to the bone to get it to sound the way mines now does. I have lost count of how many times I have wrecked Windows with stopping things which are critical for Windows OS to work properly. I now make a Ghost of my operating system before I think of cutting any Windows services or drivers now.
garrard
73 posts
 
@jim204 Sorry, I thought it was a DAC only. 
More to discover