Is an expensive CD transport worth the money? Is it any different from any other CD player?
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- čas přidán 30. 07. 2024
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In this video, we'll find out, if it's worth getting an expensive CD transport or is it an audiophile scam?
00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:11 - What is a CD transport?
00:01:15 - What makes CD transports expensive?
00:02:48 - The test
00:06:23 - Conclusion
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In The Audio Engineering Handbook I read a couple of decades ago there was a special mention of the visual cues impacting the sound quality perception. They cited experiments when a very expensive high end audio setup was placed in front of the listeners and a reasonably priced quality setup was hidden behind a sound transparent wall made of the speaker grill material, and vise versa. They ran 4 scenarios to the unaware test subjects: kit 1 visible - kit 1 plays, kit 1 visible - kit 2 plays, kit 2 visible - kit 1 plays, kit 2 visible - kit 2 plays. The listeners prefered the sound of the expensive kit when they saw it, even if the kit 2 was playing. The sound of the expensive kit playing behind the wall 'lacked in musicality, sound stage, etc' when the inexpensive kit was visible. This effect is used by high end companies to make their kit look beautiful and expensive as the perceived sound quality will be positively impacted by the visual cues psychological effect.
Early optical was NOT well implemented, as coax sounded much better, however now both mediums sound about equal. Also, jitter is a thing and it can affect the sound you receive from a digital out. Sorry you couldn't hear any differences in the devices (I CAN).
There's an important factor called jitter that you have totally dismissed in your video. All transports are bit perfect but the issue is that cheap ones don't have high quality crystal oscillators that control the timing of said bits and since most transports send the data out via optical SPDIF and/or coax, the connected DAC is at the mercy of the word clock that the transport has built it. Unless your DAC has built it re-clocking of the bitstream, you will hear a difference between transports.
Absolutely!
How much is the salary from the manufacturers of CD transport??? So what if its jittery??? I went to audio shows mister with treated rooms and I honestly not sold . If the difference is minute is it worth 5000 usd more??? You have to be joking. The 30 dollar sony dvd player sounds fine and almost the same to my ears. Its just one and zeros you effin nerd. Never flex with a CD transport. Flex with an amp or speakers with that money.
They have run the tests. Can you prove otherwise? I would like to see the measured details between a $50, $500 and $5000 transport.
Chrystal oscillator is not a major cause of jitter. Mechanical precision is. However all good electronics manufacturers know perfectly well how to overcome jitter issues even in their budget CD players.
I have clearly heard the difference between higher quality CD transport and decent to good CD players. It's called: "jitter" and the difference are not subtle, even my 9-year-old daughter heard it. (Blind test). if a regular CD player works for you, that's what you should use, you save money this way.
That's exactly what I was saying. A CD transport is just transport, what you heard was a difference between your DAC connected to the transport and DAC inside the CD player.
When I replaced a Marantz CD6006 (used as a transport only) with an Audiolab 9000CDT transport - both into the same Teac NT-503 dac over the same cable - I heard a significant improvement in terms of quieter background, more detail, etc.
I love how there are still crazy audiophools in the comments screaming “BuT i cAn hEAr thE DiFFereNcEs!”, like COME ON, GUYS, HE’S PROVING THAT THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE, MATHEMATICALLY! CAN’T YOU ALL JUST ACCEPT THAT THE ‘DIFFERENCES’ ARE INSIDE YOUR HEADS?
I am developing a device to reduce vibrations in hifi components. Biggest effect so far is on a solid state DAC. How can that be?
In your mind !
You are right because my ears receive better fidelity etc which my brain detects. So it is ultimately in my head lol
You spent time and effort into removing vibrations with the expectation that it (might) improve the playback and that causes something called expectation bias. Even scientists are not immune to this effect
The best way to check this is to perform an randomized double blind test - something audiophiles hate 🙂
Often it’s not practical to do a double blind or even a single blind test, as I would need 2 of the same component for some mods. There also a thing called refutation bias.
@@Coneman3 In your case I agree it would be difficult - but in your case you can also not compare your "improved" version with the original in an unblinded way. You have to rely on your memory how the device sound before your modification with what you hear after your modification. This makes it even easier to get a victim of the expectation bias....
And it not "refutation bias" if someone is sceptical about something when no scientific explanation exists.
I don't think your description of how the CD format works with error correction is quite correct. For audio that is stored in a certain sector of the disc, there is a lower resolution version of the same audio stored in a different sector. You should be able to drill a hole of 1 mm2 pretty much anywhere on the disc, and it should still be playable without interruptions - the CD player will note that this data is missing, and will find the lowres version in another part of the disc and play that instead. It stores about 30% of redundant data for this scheme. So, you will get degraded sound quality but not silence if the drive fails to read the disc in spots, unless it also fails to read the redundant data it needs.
This is the first time I've heard this. However, I am quite sure it doesn't work like that. But to be even more sure, I am going to look into that.
@@KITR-UK I believe you are right. This was based on my own (incorrect) conclusions of a very brief summary I heard of how it works. I researched it better now. The sound CD format contains about 33% extra data, for error correcting codes. Also, the data is interleaved so that a big defect on the surface which makes many bits in a row unreadable or make them read incorrectly doesn't remove data that belongs to a contiuous piece of sound, but instead it removes bits here and there for a longer piece of sound, and these bits can typically be fixed by the error correcting codes.Thanks to this, you should be able to make 2.5 mm of a track unreadable without losing any sound quality at all, *if* there are no read errors in the nearby parts of the track.
However, when even this error correction isn't enough, the CD reader will be unable to reconstruct some values, and it may start guessing what they should be, based on surrounding values, effectively playing a sound at a lower resolution as some samples are just guesses. Articles describe that CD readers can do this, but I'm not sure if they're required to do it by the standard, or if some CD readers will always give up and just produce skips or gaps instead. For really big damages to the disc, skips or silences are of course inevitable.
Your explanation is
....
totally nonsense
In reality additional bits (error correction bits using the "Red solomon" code) are added and interleaved with the normal data bits to correct reading errors - there is no "low resolution version" of the music stored anywhere on an audio CD and that would not work anyway because if a reading error occurs it would take some time to move the laser pickup to the position there there the "low resolution" version is stored and that would create an interruption in the playback.
The reason why you can drill a 1 mm hole and still could play the CD without any loss is that the data containing the playback for a period of music is not stored continuosly on the disc but "spread" over 192 physical blocks. So if one physical block is totally killed by such an hole eg. 192 logical blocks are "hit" (each of them spread is over 192 physical blocks) so only 1/192 of each logical block is unreadable and as the error correction is based on the logical blocks this amount of errors could be corrected.
If there are still more errors than the error correction could fix nearly every CD player use interpolation to "guess" the value of a unreadable sample by using the previous and the next sample. This is not perfect but normally still not hearable.
I had a sony cdp 337 player with philips dac inside, and a big difference in sound came from putting an other'clock'....
other'clock'. What is that , i have a Marantz 65 with a tda154a chip which will get recap
Very clearly told story…of the CD transport. Well done 👍
The Audiolab 6000 cdt will open your eyes....
Unbelievable, people spend money on such devices. Good video. I use a Sony 4k UHD Blu-ray player that also supports super audio CD and that only costs about 250 euros
Funny thing though is what you say about cd transports others say about dacs and other hifi components. So just buy the cheapest items out there as long as they measure good and you will have a world class sound system :)
That is my goal as an audiophile, to get a goo system for low to moderate price. I feel that high end audio has gotten out of hand with single components costing as much as a decent car and speakers costing as much as a house. It is ridiculous and it is trolling the buyer out of their money for a system that is only marginally better than one costing 1/10th the price. However, for a newbie audiophile that might have some extra money, they get "trolled" into believing that you get what you pay for and more expensive is better. With high end audio, this is rarely the case. Especially with speakers. I have seen a $6k speaker that was built no better than a $600 speaker and the latter tested better and sounded better. I believe this is definitely the case with transports as well. Yes, there are those that are built better, but really, is a $5k transport really that much better than a $500 one? I highly doubt it. By right the $5k one should be 10 times better than the $500 one, but that is never the case. Due to the Law of Diminishing Returns, you will be lucky if the improvement is 5% -10%.
Never buy the sound test graphics! If you can HEAR the sound quality differences made from the transport by your ears, you may make the justification for the money you spent, if you can hear little to non-difference of the sound quality change, buy a $50 CD player, you should be just fine. This applies to Audiophiles and consumers.
If you can’t measure a difference, you can’t hear it. Period. Testing and measuring equipment are far more sensitive and accurate that even the best ears.
Big shocker... lol not really, it's just a transport.... lol. Good video mate, had a nice time watching it, jealous of your players! :)
Cheers mate. Shocker, isn't it? I was gobsmacked, when I found out!
@@KITR-UK Yeah I expected something, with all the claims and the specs, but nope, transport = transport. It's like gold plated SPDIF Toslink cables, ummm excuse me? They do look nice, but so long as you aren't hoping they ACTUALLY improve anything, lol unless gold manipulates lightwaves in some way that I wasn't aware from OUTSIDE the carrier medium, lol...
@@Spikeypup I have to get gold plated toslink cable for another video.
@@KITR-UK Lol Let's Gooooo!
Hahahah that’s like comparing a corvette with a Ferrari. My measurement shows both go from 0-60 in 4 secs. My conclusion is Ferrari a waste of money. I don’t need to drive it to decide 😅
He measures what matters for correct music reproduction, not what people's listening preferences are. A bit of a bad analogy. And Ferrari is much nicer than a poorly build American car 😊
But if the corvette beats Ferrari or vice versa, then there is a difference. So if you throw them out of window and they get to the ground at the same time, it may be a better analogy.
@@winstonyeung1461 well, then let them show and prove the difference! As is done here.
snake oil is a bad reference
Yeah, that's not a comparison of Transports and CD Players/PCs, that's a very basic comparison using very basic measurements of the digital out of a couple of CD Players and a PC. Anyone with experience with various players and transports will know the real story.
Let's not forget that an expensive luxury transport feels better than a crappy CD-Rom Drive, similar to why old vinyl feels better. Being away from the computer's popups feels better. I've just added a 49 euro HP external DVD/CD and use a high-end DAC over USB which proves your point with just excellent sound. But it made me get an old (but high end) transport to get rid of that PC next to the DAC. I am aware I'll get the same numbers, but my clock will run on international quality time.
Yamaha..... !
a good transport makes a big difference and is expensive. just like good measuring equipment.
A good transport shouldn't make any difference as it is used for transporting data from one device to another. These data should be the same at the end of the chain as they are at the source.
@@KITR-UK theoretically
@@KITR-UK Oh yes yes, for some time now I have been watching the crazy audiophiles who have found the perfect explanation that gets them out clean and untainted from any such controversy - be it cables for thousands per meter, CD transports for tens of thousands, tube stages for hundreds of thousands, super mega hyper h-resolution or the eternal argument that vinyl is better than digital - "well, there is clearly something that either the measuring technique does not detect or it has not yet been discovered to be quantized and there are no suitable protocols, but believe me there is a huge difference". A huge difference that never stood up to a properly conducted blind test. The crazy evangelicals say exactly the same thing when you start arguing with them about intelligent design. That says enough. The other day I ran into a nice guy who swore he heard a difference in the different ethernet cables he uses to connect his hirez streamer.
@@parasitelights3158 I must admit, ethernet cables must be at the top of the audiofoolishness. Now when I think about that, I'm going to make a video about ethernet cables.
@@KITR-UKEthernet cables make difference as well !!!
Once you have an expensive DAC then an expensive transport can be worth it. Also you should be using a CD master to decide, so there is no introduced noise (as you mentioned) from a PC copy. You then have to listen in good system (not necessarily expensive). Measurements only go so so far. No measurement, or measurements, are showing you everything. If you want a credible 3d sound stage, with true depth (and you have the funds), a good CD transport is well with a listen. I am lucky enough to have an AQUA La Diva transport at home with DAC and I can assure you I would not have invested at this level, unless I was damn sure I could hear the upgrade.
Well said
Bull ! I have a dac that's noise floor and distortion are well below anything I can possibly hear and it cost peanuts. A cd transport sends either a 1 or 0, very simple. You need to go and study digital audio !
"Once you have an expensive DAC then an expensive transport can be worth it. "
An expensive DAC should use a buffer and its own clock to get rid of such jitter from its sources. So the opposite is true. A good DAC should not be impacted by jitter on his input....
Now do a test between a ferrari and a Ford.....both do exactly the same job and there is simply no necessity to spend a shit load on the ferrari unless you just wanna show off.....the principle applies to everything so why do we always pick on hifi.
Nobody forcing you to buy one.
Well, it's not a very good analogy. While both cars do the same thing, which is driving about, they do it very differently. Ford can’t drive around the corner, is made of inferior materials and the interior is terrible compared to pretty much any Ferrari.
It is easy to measure the difference between a Ferrari and a Ford - just measure the maximum speed and the maxium accelaration.
But if neither top speed and acceleration is a criteria for you as you only drive inside a city with speed limitation between your home and the next Mc Donald which is 500 meter away than yes: Ford does the same job for less money.
@@KITR-UK .
Can you say 2023 Ford GT Mk IV?
Acid Jazz, Funk & Brass 🔈🔉🔊
Most interesting thing about this video is your accent. Never heard of jitter?
Come on, jitter, really? It may have been a "problem" in the past, but certainly not nowadays.
Jitter was sorted years ago.
So was healthcare lol
I would pay 500 for a transport because I plan to use it a long time. My current cd player was 2000 guilders (1000 euro) when I bought it 30 years ago. The amount of pc cd drives that I used during that time cost more then that. Build quality is a thing indeed. Choose a good base mechanism and then go buy second hand 😂
"The amount of pc cd drives that I used during that time cost more then that. Build quality is a thing indeed. "
PC CD drives when used in a computer to access data in files (and not for playback audio CDs) rotate typically 8 to 16 times faster than audio Cds. Also the laser pickup is moved much more often and with higher speed - for an audio CD player it does not matter if skipping to an other song takes 10 ms or 200 ms - but for a CD ROM drive this impacts the speed when reading multiple files spread over the disc a lot.
Higher rotation speeds and more and faster pickup movements have their impact on the mechanic parts of the drive.
Its like comparing a truck engine with a formula one car engine....
" Choose a good base mechanism and then go buy second hand 😂
Or rip your CDs once and store the music on a hard disc.....
You can buy a 4 TB for about 120 USD and you can store more than 6000 CDs on that hard disk without any compression.
Using a lossless compression like FLAC even more than 8000 CDs could be stored on such a hard disc.
And when you playback music from a hard disc using a streamer you not have to worry about the "jitter" of your hard disc
Some i do agree, some i don’t and won’t. Each to its own I guess. But if it is the same, why having those two very nice and quite expensive CD players? You said it yourself, better CD transport better read and compensate for vibrations. Only car and portable cd players have shock absorbing buffers not the home made stuff as it degrades the sound. On a flip side, there are some amazing 💿 transports, cd Roms, video game consoles and portable discmans that do an outstanding performance 😊
Well, just for the sake of having them :)
@@KITR-UK you are just like me than 😂👍🏻
"Only car and portable cd players have shock absorbing buffers not the home made stuff as it degrades the sound. "
Such portable cd players are using digital storage to buffer some amount of music - why on earth should that "degrade the sound"
@@thomaswalder4808 someone with better technical knowledge could probably explain this better than I can but those anti-shock buffers in portable CD players have their limitations in storage ( 30 seconds mostly) so music is not played directly from the disc but it’s digital signal is compressed in a temporary storage and than pulled back, decompressed and than converted into the analogue signal. But regardless if it is or isn’t t compressed the degradation in sound quality is noticeable ( at least the players ( discmans ) I have ( had ). Cheers mate
@@technics-n-thuiast8346 Ok - lets do some calculation. A audio CD stores 44,100 16 bit samples per second per channel. As we normally have stereo this means that we need to store (16/8) * 2 * 44100 bytes of RAM to store one second of music WITHOUT any compression is 176 Kilobyte.
To buffer 30 seconds of CD music needs therefore about 5 Megabyte of RAM.
32 GIGA-Byte of DDR4 RAM costs about 100 USD.
5 Megabyte is 0,0154% of 32 Gigabyte - so we speak of costs of less than 1 cent to store the needed data for 30 seconds without any compression
Really no need to do lossy compression
Total bollocks.
Is it?
Less so, than vibration reduction in a dac !
Hysterical lololol. I really love how your "test" doesn't involve actually listening to the products. You went into this biased and your conclusions and methodology makes that pretty clear.
Well, I thought it was obvious I listened to the products.
It's simple with digital signals: if there are no faults in the signal, you can't hear it.
@@KITR-UK not according to your video. You obviously are biased
@@asphalthedgehog6580 lol only if you believe that everything in audio can be measured, it can't.
@@KITR-UK if you indeed did listen then you should probably include that in the video as well as a detailed description of all the components you use. If you're trying to hear the difference in transports using cheap gear you obviously won't be able to tell.
úplná hlúposť, každá mechanika znie inak, cez ten istý D/A prevodník. Tak , že kúpiť drahšiu mechaniku( lepšiu) má význam. podľa tohto vídeá stačí to najlacnejšie, len dobrý D/A prevodník.(ha-ha-ha)
And that's exactly the point of this video.