General transport Question

Kind of the catch 22. Yes, a better cable will/might help a lesser/unmodified player---but that same cable will help the better transport-only setup, as well. Don't underestimate the benifit of a quality transport.IMO, one could use the so so tt with a quality phono stage or cart. or phono cable---It all starts with the spinning thing.

Jitter is definitely the great bugaboo of many transports. When I was putting together my first new system in 15 years, I opted for a DVD player/external DAC combination thinking that the external DAC would provide all of the performance improvement I needed. I was greatly disappointed in the performance and didn't know where to look for ways to improve matters. I borrowed a dbx Quantum mastering processor to experiment with EQ and to my great surprise, without any EQ at all, the sound was better than I'd ever heard. The difference was the reclocking that was done and the subsequent reduction in jitter. Since I couldn't afford a Quantum, I searched for another solution and found a device called the Tent X3. It's a reclocking circuit that you can add to some standard CD players that replaces the original system clock, then refines the edges of the S/PDIF signal that it generates. The results are remarkable. I took a Marantz CD67(?) player which was horrible as a transport and turned it into an amazing transport with the addition of this device. I would suspect that very high end transports do all kinds of things to reduce jitter.

As far as cables go, I think a bad cable can mess up a good transport but I've never heard a good cable compensating for a bad transport.

Jlambrick- I agree with you on the benefits of reclocking. Where can one find more information on the Tent X3?

For jitter I am using a Genesis digital lens.It does wonders for me.Best 550$ I spend.
George

Here is a link to the Tent labs site. The X03 is under "Player Upgrades".

http://www.tentlabs.com/index.html

The installation instructions were a little vague when I bought mine. I'm an electrical engineer so I was able to trace the signals I needed to use to get it going. Maybe they've improved the instructions since then.