I want a change, but what?

Tobias wrote: "Have you tested a good many stock transports to find that they all have the slow rise time "bug", or is there a "good" group? If so, is Stereo's Proceed in it? How about my own TEAC VRDS T1?"

Yes, I have modded a few different transports for customers, including:
Pioneer DV47A
Pioneer DV-09
Pioneer PD-65
Sony DVP-S7700
Sony DVP-S7000
Sony DVP-S9000es
Toshiba 3960
Toshiba SD6915
Electrocompaniet ECD-1
Philips 963SA

Have not modded a Proceed or the Teac, but all of them have similar problems that need fixing. There is no "good group" stock. The ones that turn out the best are the Pioneer DV47A or Ai and the Sony DVP-S7700. These can become truly world-class transports. The reason is the mechanisms and the lasers in them.

steve N.
Empirical Audio
Manufacturer

Stereo - 0.5m is a no-no. I cannot even use this length on my modded transports. Only the fastest risetime S/PDIF can use a 0.5m. Not surprised that it sounds worse.

I have finally made up two Apogee Wyde Eye digital cables, identical except for length. They are breaking in right now, but my initial impression is that Steve Nugent is right, and there is an improvement with a 1.5 meter cable over one meter of the same thing.

I'll post with details in a separate thread once I get through testing. I'll title the thread "One meter digital vs. 1.5m--is Steve Nugent right?"

This looks very interesting. It's always fun when something counterintuitive turns out to be fact.

I sold my Proceed CDD and my Audio Note DAC1.1x. I purchased a CD-PRO2M transport kit (diy sites) and just finished building it. This transport is easily as good as the Proceed CDD using the DAC1.1x and the same Zu Firemine digital cable. I am now searching for a new dac. The Stello 220 looks interesting, but I may do more research and build my own 0x oversampling dac.

Hey, a transport kit--what a fascinating idea. I'll research this for sure. And you built one... congrats! How did the construction go?