Aurender Music Server and CD Transport comparison

@blakcloud -

If you search "CEC Tl-2X" on hifishark, you will find one listed on another audiomart site (I am not the seller).

I'm afraid that I can't provide a good answer to your question but I have some experience that might be helpful.

I have a Jay's CD3 MKIII transport as well as a Teac VRDS 701. Before these I had a PSA PerfectWave Transport. I also have two DACs; a Berkeley Audio Reference Series II MQA with the Alpha USB and an Audio Mirror Tubadour IV. I stream using Qobuz through my ASUS ROG laptop into the Alpha USB/Reference II.

I have over 4K CDs that I have ripped to uncompressed FLAC. I usually play the CD because I'm a geezer who likes physical media (I also play LPs).

I have found that origin of digital music doesn't seem to make much difference in the sound. My two transports sound similar if not identical and when I compare a CD with the corresponding file on Qobuz I am hard pressed to tell the difference. If my PC is mangling the sound or adding noise I can't hear it. Someday I'll replace my PC with a streamer but I'm not going to spend a lot of money because I don't expect streamed music to sound better than playing a CD through one of my transports. From a technical standpoint it's hard to understand how a digital file that has been sliced and diced through the tortuous journey of the internet can sound better than playing a CD on a state of the art transport.

I have two transports because they have some significant differences. I have a collection of HDCDs and the Jay's Audio uses dither in the LSB where the HDCD information resides. My Berkeley decodes HDCDs so I need a different transport to play them. It also has MQA and it takes a special transport to play an MQA CD. The Teac transport passes all 16 bits cleanly and it will do the first unfold on an MQA CD and the Berkeley DAC does the rest.

I am at the age where I'm trying to do my last upgrade on each component. I had a horrible experience with the PSA transport which used a cheapo computer grade drive ($15 cd drive in a $4000 transport?) which failed repeatedly. I vowed that I would never buy another transport unless the manufacturer clearly stated what cd mechanism they were using. The Jay's uses the final generation of the Phillips transport and the Teac uses their own VRDS mechanism. Both of these transports will likely have a longer life than I will.

I can recommend either of these transports. The Jay's Audio is a sexy piece of gear. It is beautifully finished and the sliding door on top of the unit has a very nice feel. I love using it. It also upsamples to 176 kHz which can sound better on some DACs. The Jay's has several outputs including I2S so it can easily be hooked up to more than one DAC. The Teac is also very nice and if you think you might want to play MQA CDs it has that capability. It only has one Coax output.

Bottom line - in my experience the transport probably isn't going to be a big factor in whether or not a CD sounds better than your streamer. But if you play a fair amount of CDs the transport is the component that you most interact with. It is also the most prone to breakdown. For these reasons I am an advocate of buying the nicest transport you can afford. Pride of ownership is a big factor in this hobby and a good, smooth, quiet, reliable transport is a joy to use.

Well said 8th-note and I concur. Different strokes for different folks. I for one place a great emphasis on playing CD's simply because I enjoy it. Like pulling a book from a library. Knowing this, I went through three different transports in three years (Hegel and Moon previously). I finally said "enough" and to reference 8th-note, bought the nicest transport I could afford knowing it was a front end I use daily. Bought a new Audio Note CDT-II/2 last year and haven't looked back. 

@8th-note 100% correct concerning the PS Audio transport. While PS Audio has great customer service, this is a piece of junk I tried DVD players and CD players (15) when I first got a DAC four years ago and PS Audio was awful sounding, worst of all. Great concept ruined by a terrible transport (to start with).

I intend to purchase the Jay’s Audio CD3 MK3 as well. In the meantime, I’m using a radically upgraded Arcam Delta 250 transport with rebuilt boards, power caps, etc. Even the resistor fuse was upgraded. It uses a BNC out. An amazing unit with the famous CM9 transport (I have two backup drives). Due to purchasing a Von Schweikert VR9 SE MK2 this week, I will wait to purchase/try the Jay’s. My audio equipment dealer said if it isn’t adequate for me, he would pay full price from me for it. I don’t want to purchase the Pro-Ject because it is so chintzy requiring a separate power supply to achieve high end quality. I now have 14,500+ CDs and 28,000 LPs. Love both formats. Stream only to sample recordings I don’t own.

PS Audio's "newer" model transport the Perfectwave sacd does not use the same Oppo Digital cd drive. Because Oppo Digital stopped producing them. Kind of hard to honor a warranty when the replacement parts no longer exist. The newer transport uses a Phillips drive, a Sound United LLC who bought D+M Group then goes back to Marantz buying Phillips in 2001. 

I "heard" that PS Audio was to release a brand new transport, but for some reason that was put on hold. That sounds strange considering their latest version is only 3 or maybe 4 years old?

I own the "older" version of their transport  with the Oppo drive and from what I've read here I guess I'm very lucky because I've had no problems what so ever. Maybe because I don't use it daily. I used a PS Audio DAC for a few years the DrectStream original DAC not their latest the MK2. For the past 2 years I've been using a Terminator Plus DAC. I was curious about the R2R DACs, so I picked one up. I'd also like to try the Mola Mola DAC from what I've read and heard it's top notch for it's price.