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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
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.
jsadurni
210 posts
 
Pardales:Have YOU compared in your system a hard drive against a reference transport: one of these...

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
pardales
652 posts
 
No, I have not used any of those. The transports I have had in my system tested
against the hard-drive is the newer CEC TL-51X (I think I have the model right)
-- it retails for around $1500. I have also had some older model Denon and
Sony CD players that were touted for their excellence as transports (in their day
5-6 years ago). None of them sounded better than the hard drive. None of them
sounded worse either. I am not saying transports are of no use.....but combine a
thoughtfully constructed hard-drive based system (including a good device for
between the computer an DAC) with a high quality DAC, and I think one would
have to spend a lot to get a significant improvement from a conventional
transport.

Hey, I might be wrong about this. But I think hard-drive based music systems
can equal some pretty nice transports.
teajay
1,702 posts
 
Pardales, I think you might be surprized how much of a sonic improvement you would hear with a reference level transport compared with a hard-drive.

I'm no engineer so I don't know why a reference transport would perform better then a hard-drive or an average transport, but every time I have gone to a better transport, right now my reference is the new Accustic Arts Drive1-MK2, the sonics get better, not just different, but a true improvement.
pardales
652 posts
 
Anything's possible Teajay. If I get a chance to demo a really top-flight transport
in my system I certainly will. That said, my hard-drive based music server isn't
going anywhere, no matter what. There is just nothing like having any song or
album in my entire music collection at my fingertips. You should see the way
iTunes 7 allows you to scroll through your music by album cover. Very cool.
Sorry, I know this is off topic for this thread.
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