Advice on CD transport

georgehifi
PM sent.  Happy Listening!

georgehifi
Thank You for the follow up.  Happy Listening!

Hi cjlundberg

I realize your budget is $1000.00. All I can tell you is I never realized how important a transport can be with regard to sound quality. It can make an enormous difference. 

I, like you, thought I’ll use a really good CD player with a digital output into a good dac. I did that for about one year and enjoyed it very much. The CD player I was using was the Yamaha CDS2100 which is a very nice cd/sacd player which uses Yamahas own proprietary transport that’s designed and made in house. It’s metal, not plastic and silent and incredibly smooth when opened. The retail on that player is $3500.00. By the way, it uses Yamahas best transport, the same one they use in their $7000.00 flagship player. 

A friend told me about a Chinese made dedicated transport that was very reasonably priced that sounded amazing. I went to his house to listen to his system (which I am very familiar with) and it sounded much better than I remembered. I asked him why, he told me the only thing he changed since I was there last time was the transport. He’s was using his CD player (an Audio Research CD 8) the last time I had heard his system. He added this transport and told me that I had to come hear this thing. He was also using a good digital cable. I was shocked at the improvement. So much so I asked him if he would be willing to bring it over to my house and let me try it in my system. He did bring it over and I plugged it into the digital input on the Yamaha CD player. My jaw hit the floor. The disadvantage is no sacd, just redbook only. Not the end of the world. I have about 200 sacd’s and about 4000 redbook cd’s. 

The improvement in in sound quality was so much better it quickly made me not care about my sacd’s. 

The name of of the company who builds this transport is called Jays Audio. The model is a CDT2 MKII. They only make 3 products. A CD player, a dac & a transport, that’s it. The build quality on this transport is really good and it looks nice as well but the sound quality is what blew me away, I never would have thought a transport could make such a difference. It absolutely blew away that Yamaha transport. The retail for this transport is $2398.00. In my opinion, worth every penny. Hope that helps.

Scot

Sony SCD-1ES or the little brother Sony SCD-777ES if you are lucky. They are climbing in value so grab them while you can and purchase an extra CD lens for backup. 

@scothurwitz Thanks for the information on Jays Audio CDT2 MKII. I am looking for a near SOTA transport that will improve on the already good sound I am getting using the EAR Acute as a transport, but for a reasonable price. I doubt that a $1,000 transport would be better. This is one heavy transport for under $3,000, 15 kg. Does it track burned discs and discs exceeding 80 minutes?   Cyrus XT signature transport is about the same price but reportedly is critical of CD quality(?).  Reviews of Cyrus are not specific.