Modwright Transporter VS Opera Droplet 5.0 CDP.

The c-core trannies are a luxury I don't have. The IE trannies will save $1K at least and, well, this DAC is still a rather amazing performer. More so when fed hi-res, but *well-recorded* redbook material is really quite satisfying. I didn't think digital could be this satisfying after being acclimated to vinyl. I've had it for nearly a year now. Of course, vinyl is still better.

To the OP: I found both the Droplet and the MWT to be technically very good-sounding but to have that digital glare or whatever that just grates over time. The AN DAC just has less of that (a lot). Is it the lack of oversampling and/or the lack of any filtering? Probably. Other than that the AN DACs are just designed and built so well.

You can read some of my comment here about Droplet and its sound as a stand alone player or as a transport with use of external NOS - non oversampling DAC.
I agree that up-sampling DACs lock "musicality" that can be associate with well setup vinyl rig.

link to thread

Mariusz

Ok, Thanks for the recommendations. Back to the question... I would love to hear more about your experience with the MWT and the Droplet. These are the machines I am interested in.

Thank you for the heads up, Grant! Sorry for the late response, I took a short summer vacation...

My honest opinion of Consonance is that majority of the components sound at least pretty good. However, there are some specific products/lines that have some issues in terms of reliability, which I would steer clear of, the current Droplet 5.0 with Philips CD transport/laser assembly NOT being one of them. In fact, that particular model, in my experience, is the most reliable CD player Consonance has produced, the original Reference 2.2 MKI (with Philips transport and volume knob on the rear panel) being up there as well. For the most part, the Consonance tube amplifiers are also both good sounding and reliable.

For the record, based on my friend Paul Folbrecht's advice, I picked up an Audio Note CD (an older CD2.1x) player, and it is easily the best digital I've ever had in my system. The sense of being alive won me over in a big way. One day in the future, I'll pick up one of the aforementioned Audio Note DACs as well, and move the player to my second system.