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

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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If you don't think transports effect sound just change transports and nothing else and listen. I was very surprised myself. I didn't think when used as a transport only there would be a difference but there definately is.

Jafox: Hovland was using a transport that started life as a $100 Pioneer CD player in their "reference system". This player was professionally modified in heavy fashion and marketed under another name. It sold for $500, even though it retained the "cheezy" low grade Pioneer chassis. In finished form, this product was the G&D Transforms Reference One Transport.

People hearing this system said that it sounded quite good, but always felt the need to add one more comment. That is, how much better would this system be if they got rid of that "cheezy" transport and put something "for real" into the system? No matter how "modified" the existing transport was, it was after all still a "lowly" Pioneer at heart and had a flimsy chassis.

After all of the hoopla, Hovland replaced the $500 G&D Reference One with the top of the line CEC transport. Ever see the price tag on one of those things??? They purchased this unit based on recommendations to them from others in the industry, hoping to achieve the best performance possible.

After installing the CEC into the system, the sound was nowhere near as good. They tried changing cabling, power cords, etc... all the usual "band aids" that one goes through to try and correct for an under-designed unit and a lack of "system synergy". When all was said and done, they put the G&D modified Pioneer unit back into the system. Not only was the G&D back into the system, the music was too. Problem solved, but it only cost them thousands upon thousands of dollars to figure out that they had the answer all along. That answer demonstrates that throwing money at a system won't make it sound good, nor will relying on "big brand names" or "industry references".

The end result was that Hovland ended up taking the guts out of their G&D Reference One and installing it into a fancy looking chassis. This allowed them to retain the excellent sonics of a good yet basic design that had been thoroughly modified in a well thought out manner. At the same time, it also allowed them to stifle those wanting something that blended with the rest of the system in a more aesthetically pleasing manner. After all, who could vote for a system as "best of show" when they were using a "budget" Pioneer cd player as their source???

As a side note, Tony from G&D ran into the same problem. So many people dismissed his modified Pioneer based unit based on the looks, that he ended up doing what Hovland did. Even though J. Peter Moncrieff of IAR stated that the G&D was the best measuring, lowest jitter transport that he had ever measured ( all this for $500 ), others couldn't get past the looks of the unit. Quite honestly, even Moncrieff couldn't get by the looks or "plastic" construction and de-rated the unit accordingly.

As such, Tony took the guts of the Pioneer, modified them as he had always done and then installed them in a "fancy" chassis. Not only was this chassis sturdier, it looked more "audiophile" too. This unit was called the G&D UTP-1 ( Ultimate TransPort-1 ) and sold for several hundred more dollars than the original unit in the original chassis. Either way, you still ended up getting the "cheezy" Pioneer remote with either unit : )

One more thing. Transports DO contribute to the jitter that one encounters in a digital based system. Try looking at ANY review of a transport in Stereophile and you'll see the various jitter measurements that accompany that component. Some transports are MUCH higher in jitter than others. For the record, jitter was first "discovered" by Ed Meitner. One of the regulars that posts here i.e. Jtinn, used to run a G&D based system until he switched over to a newer and more advanced Meitner based system. Obviously, Mr Tinn likes clean sound and has good taste in audio gear that is low in jitter : ) Sean
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PS... The story of the Hovland was told to me by an industry professional. This person is both well known on these and other forums and a reputable source of info. I have no reason to doubt what they've told me in the least, hence my willingness to repeat it as told to me.

In the high end we shell out the green for fewer compromises and/or different compromises. Considering that all designs are compromised in some fashion it's easy to say that transports with different compromises could sound different.

I've compared a CDP, a DVD player, and a high end dedicated transport and I prefer the dedicated transport. Did it make a big difference in my system? No, but the magic's in the nuances.