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Today's Transport War: Significant Differences?

I have been reading much these days about computer/hard-drive based transports as being a whole order of magnitude superior to traditional CD transports. In my reading, the camp who believes hard-drive based transports can render major improvements has been most notably represented by Empirical Audio. The camp which suggests that traditional CD transport techonology (or atleast the best of its sort--VRDS-NEO) is still superior has been most notably represented by APL Hi-Fi.

Each of the camps mentioned above are genuine experts who have probably forgotten more about digital than many of us will ever understand. But my reading of each of their websites and comments they have made on various discussion threads (Audiogon, Audio Circle, and their own websites) suggests that they GENUINELY disagree about whether hard-drive based transportation of a digital signal really represents a categorical improvement in digital transport technology. And I am certain others on this site know a lot about this too.

I am NOT trying to set up a forum for a negative argument or an artificial either/or poll here. I want to understand the significant differences in the positions and better understand some of the technical reasons why there is such a significant difference of opinion on this. I am sincerely wondering what the crux of this difference is...the heart of the matter if you will.

I know experts in many fields and disciplines disagree with one another, and, I am not looking for resolution (well not philosophical resolution anyway) of these issues. I just want to better understand the arguments of whether hard-drive based digital transportation is a significant technical improvement over traditional CD transportation.

Respectfully,
pardales
ehart
215 posts
 
Hi,

Price level affects the answer to this question. You'll see quite a few comments where people say that their hard-drive-based transport "nearly equals" or "equals" their $3000-$5000 conventional transport. I take this to mean that the best conventional transports are still as good or better than hard disk based audio.

For those of us that are in the more common $500-$2000 CD player range (Rega, Arcam, etc.) the balance seems to tip towards hard disk based audio. Sound quality of the hard disk solutions is at least as good, and the convenience is killer.

There are currently relatively few hard disk based options (compared to conventional CD players). I think we will continue to see many more of these units coming out, and units from Sony and other mass-market manufacturers before too long.

- Eric
pardales OP
652 posts
 
Very good point Ehart -- clearly a conversation about this topic in the cost-no-object realm would be different than in the budget and mid-price levels.

A few of the organizing issues seem, to me, to be:

1. The "rip" or how data is read

2. The quality of bits: are all bits equal?

3. And the whole USB/SPDIF/I2S thing.

There are probably other organizing characteristics that are important, this just reflects where I am in my understanding.
Post removed 
jax2
3,031 posts
 
For me the sonic differences have been largely insignificant compared to the difference in convenience of having an entire library of music at my fingertips to mix and match as I choose. I find I do more listening this way rather than having to get up and change the disc every time I want a change. Call me lazy, but I'd rather listen futz around with my software and hardware.

I'm not sure if what you (this thread) are referring to is the one-box HD solutions, as Tvad mentions, and or PC-based audio as I'm using.

Let me go a bit more into how I view the differences as it may be revealing to those who choose to be more discriminating about these details. I've found that when you get beyond a certain threshold of investment, that the gains you get for dollars invested become very rapidly diminishing. Yes, I can hear the differences between my friend's $7K DAC and my outdated NOS DAC which can be purchased for $500-600 on the used market. But those differences are pretty small, IMO, compared to the HUGE difference in price. If you have the money, and want to invest it that way, have at it. I'd personally rather invest in more music. If I had invested additional money in small gains in hardware I think I'd end up feeling it was a poor investment for the gains got, but then everyone has their own threshold, and their own standards. The few times I've done side-by-side comparisons going into the same DAC, the differences between transport and PC/HD audio were not significant to me, nor were they consistent enough to pick out one specific, consistent fault going one way or the other. I would not put my system up there in the realms of great high-end reference systems, rather a modest entusiast's system, judged by pretty discriminating ears. Take it for what it's cost you to read this and the fact that you likely don't know me from Adam.

Marco
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