2. digital
  3. 1136316457

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
puremusic
226 posts
 
"Here is a very simple example of why a transport makes [A] difference."
In real life any fool with a pair of ears can hear that some with error free output sound like crap and some with error free output sound like music.

Exlibris, Your take, using a pair of ears, can also find some support from a pair of eyes (actually, one eye is sufficient). Check out the following link for a pictoral comparison between Esoteric's VRDS-NEO transport and some other transports, including some that are used in top-tier players. For me, it's an example of a picture is worth a million words: http://www.aplhifi.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=560

Thanks for your thread, it's been very informative.

Best Regards,
John
exlibris OP
438 posts
 
John,
Thanks for the link. That really does put things in perspective.
pardales
652 posts
 
HARD-DRIVE!
guidocorona
4,298 posts
 
Pardales, could you please elaborate on the inherent musical superiority that hard drives, currently based on magnetic read/write heads on multi-platter Random Access media are expected to have over optical drives?
pardales
652 posts
 
I am no expert. Others can speak to, and have in other threads, the merits of the hard drive. For example, Steve at Empirical Audio has written about this on threads in the computer audio forum and at his website.
More to discover