Silly Question...does a transport have a "sound" ?

Jafox: Why am i expected to provide points of reference when those that present a "negative" aren't? Isn't this somewhat of a double standard or are you making this statement because it was i that made those comments and not someone else? While i understand that was i said was rather bold and confrontational, isn't someone saying that there are no differences or that if there are any differences, that they are "broken" just as bold and confrontational? I'm being serious here.

Why don't you ask Hovland to tell you about their experiences with transports, both "inexpensive" and "mega-dollar"? If you want me to tell you the story, i can do that. Just let me know. I'll even use product names too, but some folks are going to get pissed because they'll find out that they spent their money on brand & reputation rather than performance and sonics. Then again, one would have to assume that Hovland was also pissed when they spent many thousands of dollars only to find out that their "budget" transport was far superior, both sonically and electrically. Sean
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There is not transistor, triode, tube, PC board or wire that is sonically neutral. Why would and piece of gear be neutral?

It is impossible for anything not to leave a sonic signature! Even the best gear is sometimes discribed as have the least signature a reviewer has ever heard, but it is still there.

Sean is right again!

Yikes! Thanks for all the recent responses, but we seem to be straying more to the philosophical than practical side of my original question.

I understand no two components are going to "sound" exactly the same, even transports. But I'm still interested in whether "family traits" exist between VRDS, CDM Pro, Sony or belt-drive transport mechanisms that are somewhat transportable across brands.

For example, would a belt-drive C.E.C. which is reputed to be somewhat "lush/relaxed" be too much of a good thing for a tube-based dac like the Hermes II?

Or would a more "incisive/analytical" VRDS transport be a better match of yin and yang? (Or could I simply tune the sound with PCs and ICs to correct for any transport-dac imbalances...oh, the permutations!).

I know I'm characterizing things with a very broad-brush. And I'm not looking for posts like "you should try [insert name], it's great!" (which are easy enough to find by searching the archives).

But I'm still looking for some directional insights that would help me narrow the field (sorry if I'm being obtuse, but any advice would be greatly appreciated).

Sean...thank you for your comments. I can not speak for the comments of others here that put a "negative" spin on this issue. I agree with your statement here that people make general statements without backing them up with their own experiences/knowledge.

I see this problem a lot with interconnect cable threads here that the "best" cable must always be at the front of the system when my experiences have proven this to be not the case time and time again. And it is frustrating when such generalities are made as it steers people, who seek to learn, in the wrong direction.

In the context of my attempts to find a transport that stood out from the crowd, I listed the models I own and have tried with my favorite DACs. And I was honest to write that I simply could not hear a "repeatable" difference. How many reviewers out there ever claim they honestly did not hear a difference? None that I recall and yet every now and then I walk away from an audition or comparison not hearing a discernible difference. When I thought there was something different with the transports, upon going back to the previous, I simply was not sure. But when I changed to a cheapo digital cable (given to me by an audiophile friend) to an MIT digital cable, I could hear more silence between the notes and noticeably more decays. I thnk this is what other writers here have refered to as less smearing. And I have read here that the MIT cable is not that good either. If anything, I would have expected the transports to be more dramatic and the cables less.

I have put much effort to improve my digital playback to provide the musicality, the harmonic richness / ambience / bloom, etc., that my forever evolving phono setup has provided for 22+ years now.

As for Nrchy's comments, I agree that every component has a sonic signature. But many out there have very similar if not almost exact characteristics in this regard. I did not claim ALL transports sound the same. Perhaps a CEC or Spectral or Accuphase or the EmmLabs inserted here could bring the house down. I am eager to try this out.

Also, if the system's resolving potential is not there, such sonic differences that exist between components can clearly be masked. My system (Clearudio Ref/Accurate, Aesthetix Io, Manley Ref Dac, BAT 31SE, Wolcott Presence, Magnepan 3.5 all cabled with NBS Statement except for SilverAudio tonearm cable and one NBS Pro power cable on the DAC) is not a top tier system, but it gives me the ability to hear differences in nearly all other links.

With the transports I tried, and in the context of my system's capability, the sonic results were simply the same.

And yes, I would like to learn about the lower cost transports models that performed so well. Such a product may be just what I have been searching for; it sure beats spending $5-10k on something that brings on a marginal improvement. If people get upset that they spent way too much, at least they won't make that mistake again. And look at it this way: paying less for more performance - don't we all dream of this?

So yes Sean, please share your experiences and knowledge on the Hovland and others.

John

I wrote some time ago a few lines about my transport.
I'll copy it, probably you can use some info.

I tried some transports and the one below I bought.
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I always favoured the analog playback, simply because I listened all the years to the demo's from Levinson, Krell, etc. and I always left the rooms feeling sick or with a bad taste in my mouth.
Much too expensive what was offered there ( folks, graphic's DON'T sound like music ).

The last 4 years it changed a little bit when I first heard the Wadia 850, 860 etc, that was the first step for something musical.
Then I listended to the dCS units ( Data Conversion Systems from England ) and these one's are superb, don't ask me why, they sound excellent. Probably they use their own DAC ? ( And I don't have to buy these SACD's ....... ).

Well, after I bought them I looked for a good transport, not easy. The reasons are the same to read above, Wadia is gone and at least I tried the Goldmund.
The results about the dCS / Goldmund combo:

Once the Goldmund was installed in my system, the very first thing I'll noticed was the cleaned up bass and its coherency in terms of the rest of the sonic spectrum. (it has always seemed to me that there was something weird and slightly discontinuous about the bottom octaves of the CD; I actually managed to interpret this as the result of more accurate sampling at the bottom octaves than at the frequency and filter-limited top octave.) Now the bass sounds adjoined, as one, with what happens above it. Not only that, but there is a clarity, a pitch definition and a taut "slam" that is both awesome and breathtaking (especially when heard through a good sounding system), and, in this my estimation, completely beyond the abilities of any analogue-encoding system that we know of, or are likely to know of.

With the Goldmund CD table, suddenly you can hear into the bottom octaves, and even define a low-frequency soundstage. With the Goldmund, it was clearly there, just to the right of center.
I am not certain how to describe the feat that the Goldmund achieves in blending the bass with the upper midbass and parts northward in the spectrum. To do that, I'd have to have the vocabulary to describe the discontinuity that is the bottom two octaves of CD sound in such a way you would take note of its difference, in part and kind I think, from the upper portion of the frequency scale. Once you hear the Goldmund, you'll find yourself saying, "Aha."

The Mimesis 39 is remarkably neutral and linear. No part of the musical spectrum is accentuated and the Mimesis never give a false emphasis to singers voices.

Where the Goldmund however, really distances itself from other digital equipment results from a vanishingly low noise floor. The Mimesis's quietness allows for the retrieval of musically relevant subtle, low level details without resorting to other tricks. Lots of air around each instrument.

This low level resolution combined with the Mimesis 39 dynamic recreation captures the pace and rhythm of the music like few digital pieces. Dynamics are so wide and precisely controlled that you never even think about them. As a result, the Mimesis doesn't favor any single musical genre. Low frequencies are tightly defined and dynamic and the unit's character doesn't change with volume.
Here it is an exception.

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