Dedicated CD Transport vs DAC

@soix

Hi,

I’ve only had it for a week so I only have very initial impressions at the moment.
Also keep in mind that I have only used my vintage Rotel 955AX as a transport.

I bought the Acoustic Zen Absolute “copper foil” true 75 ohm digital cable terminated in RCA. You can buy it at the Cable Company for $552. My whole system is loomed with AZ Absolute cables and to my ears do a great job.

My early impressions of the LTA is very positive!

It uses tubes, but the sound isn’t what I think most people would consider “tubey”.
I feel that many people might stereotype a tubed product to sound warm, with limited dynamics, slow or sluggish, thick or sryupy with mushy bass, etc. 

This dac is dynamic! Both in the micro and macro sense of the word.

It’s fast! It’s not slow or sluggish or mushy… not in the least!

The tonal qualities are outstanding! I’ve been a musician for 50 years playing tenor and bass trombone in jazz venues and my Montagnana cello in classical venues. Although I can no longer play at a professional level due to my strokes, I hear live acoustic music several nights a week. I feel that I know and understand the tone of instruments. I can easily discern the difference between Bach and King brass instruments; or between Steinway and Yamaha grand pianos, etc.

Listening to brass instruments, the sound is pure! It’s dynamic, it’s got density and weight to the sound without being thick.

Listening to Art Blakey playing the drums… my God! He can hit those toms and you can feel it! You sense the skin on the snare and the shimmer of the brass symbols is amazing!

Piano has great transient attacks but you hear the sound board beautifulness in the grand piano! Hearing all the fine details of the creaking of the piano bench.

Don’t even get me started on the sound of the acoustic bass! The fullness and resonance of the wooden body, but again, not sounding thick or muddy. Hearing the plucking of the strings or the bow gliding across the strings.

I am impressed with this dac. What surprised me is how good it sounds being driven by my lowly vintage Rotel cd player. Hence my sincere questions about, does a dedicated cd transport really make a significant difference in the sound?

I remember listening to a YouTube video where the reviewer had an $11,000 Ayon and couldn’t hear a significant difference from using a $40 Best Buy cd player as a transport. He was embarrassed and ashamed of his preconceived notions that the Ayon would wipe the floor, but it didn’t.

In any case , I trust the comments of my fellow forum members over a random YouTube video.

Best wishes,

Don

@no_regrets - I can'y give you the whys and wherefores as to why transports may have optimized outputs but for instance my SimAudio 260DT is optimized for AES/EBU. I got that 1st hand from SimAudio. I also read that for instance the top of the line Project is as well; certainly there are others. I don't see how any transport that has multiple outputs limits their market by optimizing one; the rest aren't poor sounding just not optimal.

If anything the LTA Aero potentially doesn't allow users to match it with the best capabilities of a transport because of its limited inputs.

@facten My apologies! I think I may have miss understood what you were saying about the optimization of one output vs the others. Totally my bad.

I was thinking that they optimize just one output; meaning the remaining output’s would not sound good. So, in other words, don’t bother with that transport if you can’t use the optimized output.

Im sorry I misunderstood, but appreciate you helping me understand better!

Yes, the Aero may indeed limit some people due to the relatively few inputs that it has. However, based on what I have heard from it so far, I’m enjoying what it’s doing with the RCA input 👍

Best wishes,

Don

Thanks for your thoughts on the LTA and not surprised it sounds great. I’ve also got a full loom of AZ cables so we’re definitely on the same page there. I also have an LTA MZ2 pre (with upgraded LPS) and know what you mean about their stuff not sounding overly “tubey.” The positive traits are there but just doesn’t scream tubes, which is what I really like about it and exactly why I bought it.

Anyway, I forgot to mention another cheaper option that would be to get DDC to improve the performance of your Rotel rather than buying a whole new transport. I bought a used DDC to try it out and kept it because it produced very significant improvements. Here’s a Denafrips Hermes that I believe you can return if it doesn’t transform the performance of your Rotel — my guess is it would with its excellent OCXO clock. Just another option again FWIW.

https://tmraudio.com/components/d-a-converters/denafrips-hermes-ddc-d-d-converter-4/

Strange the LTA has balanced out but no balanced in. That would be a more optimal choice if it did!