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Reference Transports: An overall perspective

Teajay did a great job by starting a threat called "Reference DACS: An overall perspective."
I thought it might be beneficial to start a similar thread on transports.
Unfortunately I really have nothing much to say; I just hoped to get the ball rolling.

I'll start by throwing out a few names and a question:

Zanden 2000
CEC TL-0X
Metronome Kalista; T2-i Signature; and T2-A
Esoteric P-01; and P-03(?)
EMM Labs CDSD
47Labs PiTracer
Weiss Jason
Accustic Arts Drive 1
Ensemble Dirondo
Wadia 270se

I know that there are very few companies that actually make the drives themselves. The few I know about are:
Philips
TEAC
Sanyo/CEC

Do the various Philips drives or the TEAC VRDS transport mechanism each have a particular sonic signature regardless of which maunufacturer uses them in their designs?
exlibris
tmhaudio
122 posts
 
Henryhk:
Yes, lots of great transports/DACS originate from Japan. But as the NA distributor of the French Metronome, I must state the T2-i Sig is a world Class-A transport/DAC in 2 chassis. The even more stunning 2-chassis Kalista transport (in sound & aesthetics) w/separate Power Supply was recently compared to vinyl in 6moons.com review - perhaps the highest compliment one could receive to achieve analog purity & resolution.
henryhk
648 posts
 
Tmhaudio: Of course...I was just citing a general tendency, nothing more and it was more of a casual observation not a statement per se. I actually did listen to a Metronome CD player (one box) last year and found it excellent indeed. So the higher set up which you describe should certainly be excellent as well I would imagine.
lktanx
21 posts
 

In a modern properly designed player, transports should make no difference to the sound. Here is an example of why this is the case:

Take any cheapo transport for $10, read the data from the CD/DVD/SACD into RAM. Use the cleanest possible clock reference and read the data from this RAM for further processing. Hence you get perfect data with the cleanest possible clock.

An Ipod Nano has this type of "transport" or non-transport. Of course other design elements of the Nano makes it non-reference such as the compression of the data and the inexpensive output processing. But it does have a perfect "transport".
mikesinger
572 posts
 
Lktak, what type of ram devices are there beside a genesis digital lense (or I am misunderstanding the concept)?

could be be more specific on what RAM you are referring too (can it be added to transports ?)

thanks !!
germanboxers's avatar
germanboxers
241 posts
 
Mike, I believe Lktak is referring to what nearly all Universal players use. Models like the Denon 3910 and many other Universal players read at something like 10x rate and buffer to SRAM, then reclock out. Some carry this buffering to redbook CD as well. In theory, if your error correction software is infallible and your reclocking extremely precise, this should result in a perfect bitstream. Questions are: 1.) is adaptive error correction good enough. 2.) what influence does mechanical vibration have on (1.) and on the overall performance of the player/transport. I wish I could answer these... I cannot, but I too have heard significant and very meaningful differences among transports.
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