2. digital
  3. 169613-6041

New Transport? / Streamer? / CD Player?

Looking for help, I want to improve my CD playback and my bottleneck is my CD transport. I'm using a Cambridge Audio CXC transport with an Audio Mirror Tubadour III SE. I love how my AM DAC frames the music so a new transport seems to be the logical path. I have 500+ CDs and primarily listen to LPs now. I would like up the quality of my CD playback thinking this will be my long term path as I get older, yikes!

I seem to have 3 options:

1. Buy a quality transport, these products look interesting:

Pro-ject CD Box RS2 T (needs LPS to sound best?)
Jays Audio CDT2-Mk3 (can't turn off upsampling?)
Audio Note CDT Zero or One

2. Buy a streamer that can either store my ripped CDs or can read them from an external HD?

3. Sell my DAC and buy a one box CD player?

#1 seems to be the most logical but that's mainly because I have limited experience with #2. I have used various laptops but found that my CA CXC outperforms it considerably when playing CDs. I know you can modify computers to do a better but it seemed to be much more complicated and expensive path just to play a CD. I see there are some streamers that are like dedicated and modified computers, some have internal storage others with USB ports so you have attach a hard drive. Are any of these work considering? Keeping in mind my primary objective is to improve my CD playback vs convenience of working from an app. Is a streamer a more complicated device, needing more engineering to deal with noise or vibration issues? Some are very expensive but aren't they just dedicated audio computers.
Are there other transports that I should consider?

Another option is sell off my DAC and buy a one box CD player. Relative the cost of adding transport my budget would be about $5K. Are there any one box CD player options that I should consider? I went for the AM DAC because of how the DAC frames the music, it's an R2R DAC and the music is very fluid and musical. I'm sold on this direction for CD playback the musical experience is similar to vinyl.

Any help appreciated! Auditioning any of the above is impossible where I live.
musichead
charles1dad's avatar
charles1dad
10,250 posts
 
@musichead,
You have what is considered to be a very good sounding DAC paired with a solid performing CD transport. I believe that moving from the competent Cambridge Audio transport up to  the very highly regarded Pro-Ject CD BOX RS2 wound result in substantial sound quality improvement.

You wouldn’t have to get an upgraded linear power supply (LPS) immediately. Though an improvement. Many owners report the stock SMPS (Wall wart) still provides excellent sound with the RS2 transport. A good LPS takes it further still.
Charles
fuzztone's avatar
fuzztone
5,645 posts
 
I have the RS2 T. The best under $10K
The big daddy power supply, the Pro-Ject RS Uni 4-way is NOT blatantly better than the stock switch mode. Probably more dependant on the DC cable quality. I use a Kimber from Russ Andrews.
jasonbourne52's avatar
jasonbourne52
2,863 posts
 
CEC makes the best transport. They've been making them for twenty + years! Belt-drive! About $4500. But there is a sale on now for less than $3k. 
facten
2,973 posts
 
@musichead  - Just as a point of reference, I was using the Cambridge with my Mojo Audio EVO DAC and upgraded to a Simaudio 260DT (transport only) and it produced a nice improvement in SQ, more body, texture and tone to the music. I haven't heard the transports that you mentioned so I can't comment directly on them, my only point for mentioning my experience with switching to the Simaudio is that I expect that you will benefit from an upgrade as well.

For what it is worth , I also switched from using a very good RCA digital cable to Mojo's digital XLR and I realized some addition SQ benefits using the balanced in/outputs.  I don't know what type digital cable  you are using , or  whether or not it would be beneficial with your equipment to also try a "type" switch. Good luck with whatever choice you make.
ghdprentice
8,131 posts
 
I would recommend investing in a good DAC and separate streamer. If you can afford a good streamer and DAC you will have no use for a CD transport. A good Streamer and DAC will sound as good and much of the time better than a CD transport or ripped (files copied to an external source). My 2,000 CD serve as wall diffusion panels. Qobuz and other streaming services offer much of their content in higher resolution than CD ant they sound better with a good complimentary DAC and Streamer for about the cost of one cd purchase per month. While vinyl provides additional resolution with greater investment the CD does not. It is fixed with respect to other digital formats. With a high quality streaming service your library is nearly infinite. My library is virtual and huge now. My streamer has storage space, and when I put it into my system it found all my ripped files (if you need to rip, just do it on a PC) on my network, so I coped to the streamer. I have not used them in many months. A good streamer is reliable. 

Many folks cannot let go of the disks they bought (sunk cost). If not upgrade your DAC as much as possible using your existing player as transport. Then hopefully enough time 
More to discover