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CD transports

I recently started running my CD player ( Luxman D380) through my external DAC and have found a significant sonic improvement.  I wonder if I would achieve further improvement in sound quality if I traded in the Luxman and bought a dedicated CD transport ( price range 3-4 K ).

Has anyone gone down that rabbit hole?

mdrone
jasonbourne52's avatar
jasonbourne52
2,863 posts
 

Confirmation bias increases with price! 

jasonbourne52's avatar
jasonbourne52
2,863 posts
 

Keep and use your Luxman CD player as a transport until the laser gets too weak to read a disc. Then toss it or buy a replacement laser pickup. Me, I'll just keep buying cheap secondhand DVD players.

gregm
3,405 posts
 

I second @jasonbourne52 ’s advice to keep the Lux until it dies. If not, another contender is TEAC: their CDPs use excellent transports and any used CDP will work very well as a stand-alone.

BTW, bits may be bits, but extracting them and transporting them correctly has proven a tricky business*; however, spending 4k on a dedicated transport in the age of streaming seems excessive -- you can buy a whole lot of music for that money:)!

 

*I auditioned the big Metronome transport. It is amazingly better the little Magnat tube CDP I use as transport, but... 40k??? I’ll stream in hi definition instead, download tons of music, buy a mid-priced DAC, and still have money left over for the holidays!😉

noske
783 posts
 

@jasonbourne52 Keep and use your Luxman CD player as a transport until the laser gets too weak to read a disc.

Hang on. I recently replaced my 14 year old Rega Saturn laser mechanism box type thing (by a qualified tech, he also took the opportunity to fix some flaky solder etc etc) when it started having issues.

Mechanism USD$10 from Ali. That is ten bucks. Note for Rega folk - the most recent Saturn Mk II is a different mechanism from Mk I.

The internal DAC (Wolfson) was pretty decent, but antique. Yeah, 14 years old. Hooked up new Topping E30 external DAC.

Like @mdrone I am most impressed and surprised.. I was also playing with the idea of a dedicated transport. Nah, not anymore.  Not going there for the foreseeable future at least.

facten
2,881 posts
 

Op, if you want to degrade your sound take this advice proffered above:

 

"Any competently-designed player/transport (including DVD) will work just as well as a high-priced transport. Digital is not like analog where more costly turntables sound better. Bits are bits! The old analog ideas do not apply to digital! I use a secondhand JVC DVD player"

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