Will a new CD transport change my sound?

I'm currently using a Quad 67 CD player as a transport, feeding an MSB DAC. I've never played around with swapping transports, so I was wondering - would a better quality one (I'm thinking TEAC VRDS) improve the sound quality?

I hope this isn't a contentious area - I don't want any flame wars of the "cables make a difference, oh no they don't" variety.

 

There is no theoretical reason why a different transport feeding a DAC should make any difference. Certainly I have not noted any differences in the very limited no of times I've had the opportunity to do this.

Others say it does make a difference.

Chris

 

In my experience differences are marginal at best

 

Yes change to a Mac.

 

different transports will play a very large part in the final sound ...this is easy to test ...nip out and by a very cheap dvd player and hook it up to your system then swap for the quad 67 ...even that being very long in the tooth it should be quite obvious the difference ...

I still own a quad 77 and a 99cdp2 there's significant differences between these ...and yes the 99 plays into a dax decade via a spdif out ...

but I hear you all shout the 99 doesn't have a digital coax out ...well mine does as I fitted it myself ! tapped off one of the optical outs

 

I think this really is down to the DAC. I have had a couple up sampling DAC's (Benchmark, Bel Canto DAC2,) and to be honest I could not really tell much difference if any between a cheap DVD player, sound card or a dedicated transport. Last 2 DAC's I have had have been NOS with no digital filter and also have not reclocked the signal. With these NOS DAC's there is a noticeable difference with different quality transports.

 

Well I don't think so, but may be you can ckeck out for that you are asking for. and for the uninitiated, a transport is like a CD player, except it doesn't have an internal DAC that produces analog outputs that can be fed into a stereo "as is" and produce music.

 

I have had the same question. Since I own 2 pcs COPLAND 277 and 1pc 288 built like a tank, all includes the same TEAC VRDS1 transport, and they have coax digital output, good quality external dac should be used to test the difference. Once the teoretical advanced transport and then switch to the crappy DVD player transport and lets see the difference. i have a Pioneer U-05 external dac, I do not know if this would be enough for testing.

 

To paraphrase a much wiser person than I, you can't make the 1s more 1ish, nor the 0s more 0ish.

I have owned many transports (some in the multiple thousands), back when I believed everything I read in audio. And to be honest, I never detected any difference between any two transports, nor are there any reasons they should sound different.

 

It's unlikely to make much difference, if any.

When playing a CD, pits in the CD's surface are read with a laser. The audio data is CIRC encoded, which provides error detection and error correction. The data is then passed to the DAC to be converted to analogue audio for playback via your amp / speakers. When using a separate transport unit, the digital to analogue conversion is in a separate unit from the transport unit, so the transport unit is only concerned with getting the 1's and 0's from the CD.

If the transport is able to read the disk perfectly, then the error correction does nothing and the data sent to the DAC is perfect. It doesn't matter if it's a dead cheap transport or mega expensive, data is data. Note that even a $15 computer CD drive is capable of reading data from a good audio CD with 100% accuracy (otherwise it would be impossible to use optical disks for storing computer data).

Where a difference may occur is if the transport is not able to read the CD 100% perfectly. There are any number of reasons that may occur, but most commonly it's due to scratches on the CD (which may be invisible to the naked eye). Some transports may be better at reading imperfect disks than others, though there's no guarantee that an expensive transport will be better than a budget device.

Inexpensive portable CD players can often cope with badly scratched CDs better than expensive HiFi units, though they may not handle small read errors as transparently as the HiFi unit.

Double blind ABX testing is likely to show no difference in sound quality between one transport unit and another when using good quality CDs.

 

There is a Polish guy, making a website called lampizator, he believes, the sound quality is more dependent on used DAC chips and surrounding components and power supply + the used output stage. It is practically an op amp which is normally is under the desired sound quality. He usually replaces it with tube, and he is renking the cd player according to modding potential.

http://lampizator.eu/lampizator/CD_player_ranking.html

I even do not believe in high quality digital cables like hdmi, usb, or other, never ever experienced and difference.

 

Exactly this. The data on a CD has multiple redundancies, so by the time the stream exits the S-PDIF (or AES-EBU) output of a CD transport, it is very robust, and virtually error free.
It should also be noticed that any uncorrected errors in the stream do NOT result in audible changes like 'more bass' or 'muzzy treble' but clicks or mutes in the output. In other words, it either works perfectly, or it doesn't work at all.

S.

 

Keep in mind that the primary mechanisms are made by a small number of manufacturers. TEAC, Philips, and a few others. So how great a difference is there likely to be?

That's the wonder and strength of digital. It works or it doesn't. Digital doesn't have "slam" or PRAT. Unlike cartridges and styli for vinyl, where some spend enormous amounts of money, and unlike vinyl itself, which is a wrestling match with physics in which the listener never wins, digital is 1s and 0s. They are read by every functioning transport correctly and passed to the DAC.

 

I have tried probably a couple of dozen players over my time, and have noticed big differences. The best was a Micromega Duo transport, probably the worst a budget Pioneer DVD player. The Pioneer stable platter was pretty good as were Arcam (Delta 250 transport and Alpha and Alpha 7SE CDPs using coax digital out).

 

Would you care to hazard a guess as to what mechanism could cause such differences? Considering how CDs are read, and how first error correction, then error concealment works, I struggle to understand how audible differences are possible, if evaluated unsighted and with reasonable rigour.

S.