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Transport - does it matter to the sound at all?

I wanted to start this thread, to gain some insight into peoples experiences on this subject.
My view: From the outset of CD and digital media, we were force fed the view that 'its digital so always sounds the same whatever' ideology. Remember the jam on the cd, and it doesn't skip. Since these naive beginning we quickly found out it did matter, and the quality of components, interconnects (its wire isn't it so doesn't affect the sound?) and design DID affect the sound. So I firmly believe that a transport does affect the signal quality and final sound output in a big way. There are transformers, capacitors, boards, wires, all the components that have such a bearing on quality output on all the other components in a system. And the motor, the bearings, the transport mechanism, jitter correction, noise, damping, vibration from itself and speaker interaction ALL will affect the sound.

My question, what are the views on this balance between cost on a DAC and the transport. Are many of us getting it wrong bolting on Sony DVD players to high quality DACs? And are many of the 'quality transports" out there just re-boxed philips units. It does appear very few manufactures build their own transports aka Meridain, Linn and Naim to mention a few.

It would be great to see a high quality transport kit out there, which would allow a full transport and kit DIY project, with mods and part upgrades available at an affordable price.

I haven't the money at present to upgrade my DAC, which is an upgraded Audio Note DAC 1.1 and Zero transport, but I am very happy it at the moment as it was a huge jump over oversampling units I had owned previously.
astrostar59
seandtaylor99
1,262 posts
 
The only difference between a good transport and bad transport is jitter.

So you have a choice. Buy a low jitter transport (often very expensive) or buy a reclocking DAC, or a reclocking device to sit before your DAC.

Personally I feel you get much more flexibility from a reclocking device or DAC than an expensive transport, as you can now feed digital signals to it from any transport, from your PC, from a squeezebox, and the sound that comes out will be relatively immune to the quality of the transport.

On the other hand if you buy an expensive transport it will probably sound great, but won't help at all should you ever want to add a squeezebox.

And my final concern is that the transport is generally the least reliable part of digital audio, so I'd rather not spend thousands on it.
ryder
1,733 posts
 
Pardon my ignorance. If the only difference between a good transport and bad transport is jitter, does that mean the best and most expensive transport will have an extremely low jitter?

IF jitter is the sole parameter in affecting the sound quality of any transport, can we assume ALL transport(including the most expensive ones) will sound similiar if the issue of jitter is addressed successfully?
aplhifi
515 posts
 
"The only difference between a good transport and bad transport is jitter."

I wish this was the case but, unfortunately, it is not! Jitter is very important but there are other very important factors as well.

"So you have a choice. Buy a low jitter transport (often very expensive) or buy a reclocking DAC, or a reclocking device to sit before your DAC."

I wish this was the case again! And, according to you, where all the jitter from the transport goes when you implement your re-clocking devices? When you stick your head in the sand the world disappears, is that it?

In general, it is not a good idea to use DVD players for transports (unless serious upgrades are applied), but there are few DVD players that can do the job. Sony ES models for example.

Regards,
Alex
zaikesman
3,017 posts
 
Without reading through all of the preceding responses, let me just state (as I have before) that no, contrary to Seandtaylor99, my experience is that a reclocking device will not necessarily render insignificant the differences between transports. Why this is, I cannot tell you with certainty. I can only report that although I find my Monarchy DIP 24/96 to be an effective device for improving the final sound (and anti-jitter box test measurements linked on the Monarchy site seem to indicate that it's one of the more effective such devices at doing its job), it doesn't somehow obliterate or equalize the audible differences between transports, which remain as plain as ever. In fact, it's entirely possible (and seems logical to me) that it actually exposes those differences a bit more clearly, by granting basically the same degree of improvement -- and hence increased resolution -- to each of the sources paired with it (or, if you prefer, to the DAC paired with each of those sources). But whatever the case, I've found that using this otherwise fine unit in no way enables me to consider transport selection as noncritical -- a nice wish, but regrettably, no go en mi casa.
seandtaylor99
1,262 posts
 
Zaiks ... the Monarchy is a bad example of a jitter buster. It's priced very competitively, but it either uses a PLL or an ASRC chip to reduce jitter. It does not eliminate the jitter of the transport.

To really eliminate the jitter you need to buffer data to RAM and reclock it with a low jitter oscillator. There's an article about it on the Lavry engineering website.

So it's not surprising that you can hear transport differences with the Monarchy, just as people claim to here differences with transports with the Benchmark DAC1 (also an ASRC).

Alex, you're not the first person to tell me that there are other differences, and also not the first person to not tell what the differences are. If it's a business matter to keep secret then I understand. I would genuinely like to know. It seems unlikely to be bit errors, since a $20 DVD_rom drive can install a bit perfect copy of Windows XP, reading the disk much much faster than a CD would need to be read. (And the OEM purchaser of such a drive can source the main drive components for only a few dollars).
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