How important is the transport when using a DAC?

not sure how to "demonstrate" it for you Gumby?? (without inviting you over with a cheap transport in hand). i've hooked up several cheap transports/cd players to my PWDmk2 and they all sounded obviously worse...compared to my PWT.

can't/won't make the blanket statement that a better transport will yield better sound but it absolutely did with my PSA gear. true...the PWT is a 3k transport and the question of "how much better" or "is it worth it" can still be debated. but make no mistake here...it *can* make a very noticeable difference.

The answer to your question is yes, you should have a transport that is well matched to your DAC because the system sound will take on the character of the transport. One of the better transports available at a reasonable price is the California Audio Labs Delta transport. I know of one currently for sale. If you check around you will find it.

Hi LearyScott

I had a $30 Memorex DVD player as a transport to a Musiland MD-11 DAC and this combo was very un-involving. When listening to music all I could picture in my head was grey cold steel. I later changed the transport to a Cambridge Audio CD player that had a significantly better build quality and the overall sound improved. YMMV.

What transports are you eyeing?

If you are going to use a dac then a good transport is always going to make a big difference. I've experimented with the concept over twenty years and you need a good transport to hear what your dac and system is truly capable of.

Very much a function of the overall architecture. With reclocking and asynchronous DACs, the difference are definitely a lot smaller then with a traditional synchronous architecture. It is still a bit of a mystery to me why a transport would make any difference if the bits are fed into a buffer and then completely reclocked, but I guess they still do.