Are all red book cd transports created equal?

steve59
In theory bits are bits right?

There are differences, read error correction is not the same and can vary quite considerably between CD transports, and an error is replaced (guessed) by what came before it, a 1 or 0 and it only gets it right 50% of the time.
As well as the amount of jitter out of that spidf output, which I had a jitter counter to read it and they are very different.

Better transports have less read errors, and better jitter on their outputs.
If you want another good cheap CD transport, get a Cambridge Audio CXC very good, not the best, but you have to pay big bucks for those and not that much better.

Cheers George

Thanks for the replies. I have the option of burning them to my pc to load into my streamer, but I’m not ready to give up the cd format completely yet.

I have the option of burning

Don’t burn, much more errors come with doing this, that why they nearly always sound brighter, and less easy to listen to.

Left-original store bought stamped CD
Center and right both burnt, one gold blank the other normal

https://ibb.co/grHv6z7

Now you can see why the error increases the pits/lands are deformed.

Cheers George

My opinion based on owning many CD transports is NO, they are not all created equal.

@steve59,

I understand you are not quite ready to give up on CD’s yet. I would use Pioneer player in the interim and invest in a high quality streamer with internal hard drive so you can enjoy bit perfect rips of your CD’s.

There are plenty of software programs (Express Rip, Audiograbber) and standalone high quality ripper like Innuos Zen Mini MK3 or Vault 2i that will make exact copies of your original CD’s.

My 800 plus CD’s rips stored on my Aurender N10 sounds just as good as my original CD’s.