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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
aplhifi
515 posts
 
The computer serves only to provide readable 1s and 0s, and evidently, despite their "noiseball" characteristics PCs are perfectly capable of reading 1s and 0s from CD roms, and hard-drives and streaming them over ethernet or USB without a single bit error. That's how you're reading this web site.

If this is what you believe in and makes you happy, so be it.

An external DAC can have its own power supply, and isolating any noise from the USB or ethernet inputs is not rocket science. Finally RAM based FIFO buffering and reclocking will feed the DAC a bit-perfect signal with noise removed and ultra-low jitter.

Simpe, isn't it? If you don't care how the "perfect" data was processed and transmitted that's fine too.

I understand that Alex produces respected machines, but I see no coherent engineering based arguments that refute any of what Steve (or I, or others) have said.

Thank you for the nice words! I am sorry but I can not further elaborate.

Regards,
Alex
pardales OP
652 posts
 
Okay, as of now (and this is just my read on the debate) the crux of the argument between the two positions I started this thread out with seems to be about whether the computer can send out a decent signal. Alex is suggesting that there is so much noise involved in the computer that it is not going to send out as clean/clear a signal as a classical CD transport will send to its internal DAC.

So, for now, I guess this is the question: is the average computer really putting out an inferior signal to that of the transport section of a good CD transport?

One camp says "no, not right now", and the other suggests, "yes, it now can".
Ag insider logo xs@2x
drubin
3,277 posts
 
Based on your answers, Pardales, I think the question you meant to ask is, Can the average computer put out a signal equal to that of a dedicated CD player or transport?
seandtaylor99
1,262 posts
 
"So, for now, I guess this is the question: is the average computer really putting out an inferior signal to that of the transport section of a good CD transport?"

I think the key here is to define "inferior", and specifically "inferior in a way that would degrade the design of a competently designed reclocking DAC".
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
Alex - I dont know what you mean by "Noiseball", but I do know that once you remove the digital and analog conversions from a typical computer chassis, whether it is using USB or Wi-Fi, this provides the opportunity to generate an extremely low jitter data stream.

Likewise, if you speed-up the CD player and make it essentially a CD-ROM drive and buffer the data, you again have the opportunity to generate an extremely low jitter data stream.

As for the computer sounding unsatisfactory, you obviously have not heard a good computer source yet. This is like listening to a $60 Walmart CD player and then proclaiming that all CD players sound terrible......and BTW, the Olive will only challenge good CD players once it is modded.

I have superb native 24/96 tracks mastered from tape in .wav format. I would like to see you play these on a CD player.

Steve N.
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