Hi Paul. On another channel I watched a 30-40 minutes blind test of audiophiles listening to $5,000 to $10,000 transports and a 10-15 year old $500 transport. They did the blind A/B test of these 5 different transports and it turned out that the people really couldn't tell the difference and if there was any difference it was only very slight, convincing each of the listeners that it was much better to spend their money on the best DAC they could afford and the rest on something that was maybe at least visually appealing to them. So, I'm with you all the way.
The reason you don't hear a difference is that when the DAC gets the exact same data, there is no difference! Ironically, a CD drive isn't the most reliable data storage in existence because it's prone to scratches on the CD causing data errors. Your US$5 USB flash drive can sound 100% identical to a US$20,000 CD transport, if not better (due to scratches on a CD). I can respect those buying an expensive CD transport because they like all things expensive. If you already have a private jet and a few super cars in your garage, I guess a CD transport costing US$20,000 is a no-brainer, even you know it wont make the sound any better. People don't buy Rolex watches to get to their work in time either.
I’m pro cd 💿 transports / DAC’s and yes vinyl..in essence PHYSICAL MEDIA! I’ve had more than a few songs “no longer available “ on my streaming services ..which now makes me think of going back to physically backing up my musical playlists. Don’t forget ..you won’t own anything..sounds familiar.
Which songs are "no longer available" and on which music streaming service? I've never seen this on Amazon Music Unlimited. Rather, I very much enjoy the access to more than 100 million music tracks. With the support of lossless CD quality or up to 192kHz 24 bits (better than DSD-64), there really is no going back for me. My about 530 CD & vinyl disc collection is just not attracting to me when I now can enjoy the ease of use and speed of use of streaming without sacrificing quality. Also, when you get used to playing tracks and making your own favorite playlists rather than being bound by albums with many unattractive tracks, you realize streaming is just so much better.
@@ThinkingBetter I can't find Sly an Robbie's "Language Barrier" on any streaming service (this is an album, not a single track). There are several Danny Gatton albums I cannot find on streaming. Perhaps they were "never available" as opposed to "no longer available".
@@tonymuljat3306 It’s possible there is music made and not among the approx. 100 million tracks available on the leading streaming services. A friend of me has the world’s largest private collection of vinyl discs and CDs. While it probably takes an average 15 minutes to find an album in his huge collection, I can find an album within 3 seconds and have around 5 times more albums to choose from than he has.
@@tonymuljat3306 Having 100 million tracks available in lossless quality within seconds is still awesome even 0.01% of what I want to listen to is not available.
@@tonymuljat3306 Perhaps they are not popular enough? There is an approx. massive hundred million tracks to choose from already with leading streaming services.
you need to make sure you mention to use the digital coaxial out on the cheap dvd player into your dac, that is very important. If you run the analog RCA outs into your dac, youre only using your dac as a preamp, the CD audio is rendered through the likely crummy DAC in the dvd player.
Yes, any decent cheap CD player with a TOSLINK can output the data with as good quality as a US$20,000 transport. But audiophile gear is like cars. Any car can bring you to work and home again, but not any car is equally luxurious. For CD players used as transport, data is data and a US$20 USB CD player connected to a Mac mini can do equally as good as a discrete CD transport. A Mac Mini is good choice for a digital music source.
Agree fully with Paul. If I am not mistaken, many DVD players have a buffered output which can result in surprisingly good sound quality when used as a transport. Lukas Fikus blogged about performance he was getting from cheap DVD players long before he launched his Lampizator brand. He made some minor mod and received performance that rivaled some of the most costly CD transports.
I agree entirely. I upgraded my DirectStream Mk 1 DAC to the later Mk 2 and was amazed at the difference between the two. I have to admit that the recent firmware update to Mt Massive has been awesome.
Well, sound quality I'm not going to comment on, but there are other factors to consider: One aspect of CD transports that isn't discussed nearly as often as it should is NOISE. I don't mean electrical noise, but _mechanical_ noise. Most cheap CD transports are primarily designed to read computer data discs and spin the CD at high rpm, creating much noise in the process that can be heard from a few yards away. Much less common nowadays are the dedicated proper music-CD transports that spin the CD at the Red-book standard low linear scanning velocity of 1.2 to 1.4 m/s (approx 500 rpm near the spindle, 200 rpm outer edge); those are _much_ quieter in operation and usually cannot be heard during the quiet passages. Transports also differ significantly in their ability to deal with damaged discs and in their ability for error correction. They also differ in search speed, and only a minority of transports (mostly older transports) offer the facility for index skipping (not to be confused with track skipping; indices are sub-markers _within_ tracks). Some transports mute the SPDIF output during scanning (track search); others don't. DACs respond differently to this behaviour and don't always play nice.
You forgot about mechanical decoupling/isolation. Idk about newer CD players, but in my experience, some of the older ones are more susceptible to mistracking from vibration. Important if you are tight on space and listen at higher SPL's with ample lows. Not as important as a record player with a stylus in a groove, but still a consideration, in spite of the laser optically coupled to the data disk.
Other good arguments why a US$5 USB flash drive is superior to a US$20,000 transport lol. The flash drive makes no noise and doesn’t have issues with scratches causing data errors. And spend a few Dollars and you can contain your entire CD collection on solid state. Or just use modern lossless streaming and enjoy same audio fidelity but much more music to enjoy…with no noise from any spinning disc lol…
@@shipsahoy1793 What helps here is if the player chassis is heavy, it dampens down vibrations. A lot of players these days read the CDs using a computer CD-ROM drive, and simply have a larger buffer and multiple attempts at reading the same section of track if vibrations throw the laser off course. TBH, in static home-audio CD players I have personally never experienced tracking issues due to vibrations. The tracking issues I experienced were always due to either surface damage, eccentric pressings, excessive warping/undulations in the CD substrate, or worn cd-hold-down bearings.
@@ThinkingBetter I actually often do this. I load my CDs onto a hard-drive & USB flash drive, and often listen through a DAP. Best of both worlds; I still always have the CDs as a hard-copy with the few added benefits they offer over downloads.
Used 1990s CD players from good brands have great CD mechanisms, much better than a $30 DVD player. And if you find one with a SPDIF output you'll have a very good transport for peanuts.
I still use my rotel rcd-970bx from 1995. Digital out to dac works perfect. Only thing i did with it was to change a plastic gear that open the drawer.
I guess I have been blessed with not having golden ears. Outside of speakers, amps, preamps and maybe DACs (maybe) I don't tend to hear much that constitutes Paul's "huge difference". Yes, I can hear differences between tube choices in tube amps and preamps, but they're not "huge" and as with so many things in high end audio it is rarely clear whether or not one difference is better than another. Just different. But, amongst audiophiles "huge" can mean a lot of things. And the audiophile industry runs on convincing us that any difference is a huge difference and every "difference" is an improvement.
Modern DACs do a wonderful job of reducing or even eliminating the jitter from average CD transports, which have also gotten much better than they used to be.
There is an awful lot of space debris just itching to collide with the satellites that stream the music we enjoy. When that day becomes a reality, I will take comfort in the fact that I have kept my physical media and transports. 😏
There are a lot of wired connections between continents out there. A solar storm combined with a change of earth polarity (no shield) might be another threat for magnetic data or digital transmission. Same conclusion: plastic media.
@@tonep3168 Um, yes. Just yesterday most of us lost cellular service. No one knows why. An asteroid is just an example of the many disasters that are not only possible, but inevitable. 😎
I love cd, flacs and vinyl. all sound great, and all sound slightly different. there's good and bad in all parts of your hifi system, it's up to each individual to choose their kit and spend what they can afford.
Some DACs are quite immune to input noise and jitter. Maybe Paul's own products fall into this category. Other DACs are not immune - and might benefit greatly from a good CD transport and input cable. Not to mention AC power...
Great video Paul. I only listen to cd's. Quit streaming over a year ago. Cd's just sound better and have an assortment of cd players I use as transports into my various dac's. Cd's are far from dead especially in Europe. Everyone is entitled to their opinion yet the better quality cd players and transports do make a difference. Why, I do not know yet they do. I have heard it. Does this make it true for all you non believing people? No! And that is fine. I enjoy what I have and use and that is the real purpose! Enjoy your music no matter the platform. I like a lot of things that other's do not. So what! I am not telling you my stuff is best, just that I enjoy what I enjoy. I like that others do not like stuff I like and makes me different! Have a great day!!
I was wondering if a Mcintosh D150 DAC would sound fine with a Sony BDP-BX37 as a transport? I did read on a forum that that DAC doesn't resync the clock, so that's why I was wondering.
Yes, and any CD player with TOSLINK is also a CD transport. As long as your DAC gets the exact data stored on the CD, the audio will be the same. Ironically, a computer USB CD drive for US$20 is already designed for reliably providing data because most computer files wont work if they are corrupted. Such US$20 drive can sound as good as a US$20,000 transport because the DAC will see the exact same data. If you are careless about your CDs and they have scratches, you might have some theoretical argument about how well errors are dealt with sonically, but if you are that careless about CDs, you better rip them to an SD media or just go streaming.
@@ThinkingBetterfor many years I thought the same thing. I have an Audiolab CD transport that I absolutely love. I had trouble playing parts of a particular CD and I incorrectly assumed something was wrong with the transport (it was the CD). I ordered a Cambridge Audio transport and was very surprised to discover that, yes, it absolutely sounded different than my Audiolab transport. Not necessarily better or worse, but definitely different. Same DAC (Mytek Liberty), same amp (Rogue Audio Sphinx V3), same cables, etc. I switched back and forth between the two dozens of times because I was sure that “bits are bits” and a digital signal from any component must sound the same as any other. It doesn’t.
@@tedhersh9095 When the DAC gets the same exact data it also sounds exactly the same, however, CDs can be damaged and the error compensation can sound more or less close to the original. Such error correction artifacts is one reason I abandoned CDs and went for modern bit-perfect lossless CD (and better) quality streaming. With streaming you can get error free digital music nowadays and even get much better than CD quality like with my Amazon Music Ultimate account I can stream in up to 192kHz 24 bits lossless music with absolutely zero errors. If you consider improving your audio system to get better and reliable optimum audio fidelity, definitely go with modern streaming if you have such issues you mention. Also, streaming can run asynchronously avoiding jitter issues. But the biggest benefit is that you have insanely more music available and don’t have to be forced to play CD albums with tracks you don’t like. Making your own playlists is a huge benefit.
@@tedhersh9095 Those problems indicate you have scratched CDs and you hear differences in error correction algorithms. You should switch to modern lossless high quality streaming where your music data is always without errors and you can stream in even better than CD quality.
@@tedhersh9095 Data is data if the data values are the same and they arrive in time to the DAC. Thus if you hear a difference it’s either due to some software bug or data errors on your CDs being compensated differently.
I disagree. I ran my vintage Marantz CD63SE thru a PS Audio Stellar Gain Cell Dac and could hear very little if any difference. I updated the Marantz to an Audiolab 6000CDT and I heard a major difference. I think a good source & a good DAC is needed. One without the other won't help much.
or you can rip all the wav files and dsd from your cd and sacd. Save it on your home network and play it on your dac. You can make a library, a playlist, browse and play at will. Best sound quality and more convenient.
Removing a bottleneck from your system will enable you to find the other bottlenecks. At a certain point the transport will be the bottleneck that matters. Then replacing it will give you the greatest improvement.
First, great music 2nd, good enough recordings (but don't get me started on great sounding ~1960 Columbia jazz) 3rd, everything you can control I guess I'm a musicphile happy to learn from audiophiles.
What do you find so sonically wonderful about 1960’s Columbia recordings. I’ve been an audio enthusiast and jazz lover for 63 years now and I know that the musicianship is excellent but the SQ is mediocre. Blue Note, Verve, Prestige, Impulse and Riverside come to mind for 1960s jazz recordings. Columbia and Warner Brothers never did it for me. A big part of my life was attending live music venues like jazz clubs and concerts in in New York City and other venues in the tri-state area so I believe that I have pretty extensive jazz knowledge to compare live to vinyl or digital recordings. I also made lasting friendships with musicians like Sonny Rollins and Freddie Hubbard and at present I have a great relationship with Emmet Cohen, one of the best jazz pianists in the business. Sonny Rollins once told me that I have a real understanding for what he was trying to accomplish with his music and he meant it when he said it to me. All of what I have just said is just my life experiences and my own opinion just like you have yours.
In Harvey's blind listening tests from Pearl Acoustics showed that over a Toslink cable, there were no Audible differences between all cd players tested. The same was not true using the cd players internal dac's. This can also be tested by feeding the Toslink signal direct into a PC and analysing the bit stream. This has also been done countless times and videos exist on CZcams showing the process. Again no difference between transports or using the data read direct off the cd by a PC. DAC make a difference digital cd transport over Toslink, USB, HDMI or other is a wash
I’m not going to enter into the territory of how to prioritise your hifi budget when making component purchasing decisions. But you’d do well to think in terms of being ‘price appropriate’. If you’ve invested $20000 in a pair of speakers, then pairing them with a $299 amp is highly unlikely to do your speakers full justice. I have a highly resolving hifi system, including a mid-tier CD transport. I also have a cheap and cheerful, entry level, 4K Blu-ray player. If I use the Blu-ray player to play CDs, the deterioration in playback quality, is subtle, if it exists at all. Difficult to tell when you’re having to make volume level compensation.
I use my computer for all my digital…there, I said it USB can be tamed with an interface/isolator Plenty of output I burn all my CDs and digital albums to M-Disc lossless and also store on SSD dedicated hard-drive Use a good/great USB DAC and you are golden There is no need to listen to a CD player/transport Take the money you save on the CD player/transport and put it into you DAC No matter how much you spend on the transport that money would be better spent on a DAC When you get here, you can stop or then get a $10k transport Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC $13,500.00
Dac is only as good as the digital signal it receives- I believe it's a balance ' with cd playback ' I own many cd Transports Audiolab 6000/7000/9000 Cdt I use my Sony cdp 605 esd as a transport and my Pioneer DVD player and Sony bluray player ' And for the price the audiolab 7000cdt is a winner 🏆 even though the 9000 barley edges the 7000cdt out maybe by 2-3 percent investing the extra $700 bucks difference between them should go into the dac '
Before you mentioned synergy being the most important. So which is it? Buy the expensive component, cut the corner in the rest, or take the money you have, and put it to other components instead of just one. Great speakers can sound absolutely wrong with wrong amp, source or pre. Even a cable, like Kimber, can ruin a good pair of speakers. There’s some gas for your fire.🔥
I actually agree with Paul, that DACs are way more important to sound quality, but "huge" is a real audiophile BS term. The differences between 2 transports aren't "HUGE" if the DAC is identical. Similarly, the only "night and day" differences between components is having one plugged in to electricity and not the second. Think about what "huge" and "night and day" differences ACTUALLY mean, outside of HiFi BS...
@spacemissing "High-end audio: Where a difference you can barely hear is HUGE!" On what stereo equipment did you test CD players or transports, which brought you to your conclusion?
For this subject, absolutely it’s snake oil and people pretending to be very clever when they’re actually not, quite the opposite. This is one subject where many people should just not open their mouths and share their opinion, as it just exposes just how little they actually know.
Yes, Bose 901 to Aspen FR-30 is huge. $500 to $5,000 CD transport, is not huge. Chevy Sonic to Chevy Corvette is huge. Porsche 911 GT2 to Porsche 911 GT3 is not huge. Let’s stop abusing the language.
In my own experience, DVD players of different makes always have a harsher more edgy character to their sound versus actual CD players when used as transports. While they work, my advice to everyone is generally that at the least, they should find a choice of source that was originally intended for music playback as opposed to a DVD player as they'll have a far better listening experience overall. For someone who can't find that, my recommendation is always to use a Playstation or Playstation 2. They can be found for extremely low prices today, and the sound quality of all variations via the optical out is wonderful, IMO, ecclipsing anything to be found in a DVD player.
First to comment! I recently bought an Onkyo Integra DPS-9.1 player to match my Onkyo Integra P-304/M-504 setup and I use it as a transport to my EverSolo DMP-A6 Master Edition. Cheers from Montreal.
All functioning CD transports and players will sound identical when using the same dac. All they do is put out the bits. If one sounds different it is malfunctioning. A $25 usb dvd drive will put out the exact same bits as an overpriced > $1000 cd transport or player. Don't waste your money on the transports. Spend money where it matters -- the speakers.
Little to none. If the transport is working within specs, it will make no difference what so ever. Unless you like the sound of snake oil. Stupid people thinking in analogue terms. A CD transport can only affect the sound if it has something wrong with it and its outputting constant errors in the data stream to the DAC, and that will manifest as audible glitches that even a rat could hear. Some people and their money are very easily parted, arguably deservedly so.
Let's put in a different way - if you have a good DAC you will notice the better transport. But if the DAC is mediocre the best transport will not make a difference.
CD transport my butt...CD media is on the way out and current products are using ancient CD drive components as the R&D in CD technology is gone with no engineers working on designing new drives. I hate to reveal the obvious, but your DAC will sound identical when the music data it clocks through the DAC chip is identical. Spending a fortune on a "CD transport" is quite ridiculous when any US$5 USB flash drive is superior on data integrity (no scratches). Your PowerPoint presentation doesn't look any different wether you save the file on a CD, hard drive or solid state memory. Likewise with music and video files. In actuality, data errors are not even accepted on almost all other data file types thus data integrity is nowadays not a concern for music at all for modern media. Ironically, CD media is somewhat prone to data errors due to scratches. The inconvenience of using CDs is also a major nuisance compared to modern streaming, where you already can stream bit-perfect lossless better than CD quality. Belief in CD transports by magic sounding better is equivalent to belief in flat earth. Some percentage of people just wanna have a different opinion even it defies facts. Now, playing CDs or vinyl discs is a more engaging experience and there is a point to be made about that. And it's also possible that some tracks have been manipulated when streamed and sounds better on CD. It's an often used argument but rarely do you see any actual evidence for it. BTW, I know the one guy having the world's largest collection of music discs of more than 2 million discs (see video on my channel from one of many of his listening rooms), but gosh it's so super inconvenient compared to my Amazon Music HD account providing even more music much much easier and in CD lossless quality or better.
Boy haven't some people gotten lazy when slapping on a cd is said to be "inconvenient." Maybe some people are yearning for the day when we won't have to chew our food. Those 2 things are about equal in effort. If streaming sounded better than cds; I'd have a streamer. It all depends on what cd playback equipment you have. Don't diss a format until you have heard, or better yet lived with the absolute best in cd playback. Otherwise you are just talking out your nose. There is reason to believe that cd is showing signs of coming back. People who are in their 50s and 60s got into music via cds and they can remember how fun it was. They are now discovering that the modern cd players generally sound way better than most 1980s cd players.
@@sidesup8286 In terms of convenience, I can access more than 100 million different music tracks on my Amazon Music HD account streamed lossless to my DAC in up to 192kHz 24 bits. I happen to know the guy with the largest CD collection on the planet who has more than 1.6 million CDs each (around 24 million tracks in total). Check the video I made when in one of his listening rooms; it’s on my CZcams channel. I can play any song knowing title and artist in less than 3 seconds. His 1.6 million CDs are stored on walls in multiple rooms and in some archive room and in boxes. But even with my own small CD collection of around 300 CDs, I can spend minutes finding a CD and if I just want to play a single track from some CD it’s rather annoying when you are used to a modern streaming UI. And just to be clear, I used cassette tape in my teens in the 70s, recorded music from radio stations on it, later in 1978 I got my first Technics SL3300 vinyl player at age 13 and in 1985 at age 20 I got my first CD player from Denon that I enjoyed using with my Stax SL-44 electrostatic headphones. I spent most of my money at that time buying CDs and vinyl discs. Some times I could spend most of a Saturday (no school) biking to a record store just to end up buying a single vinyl disc or CD that I brought home and played over and over again. Looking at the album artworks and the physics of the vinyl or CD cover/disc made all that extra effort tolerable. Later I got a job in audio engineering and has developed several products I’m sure you know. I of course can understand your view, but when I started to realize I am not losing on audio fidelity while now I can easily explore and play whatever I want without having to spend time and money buying it, I became sold on streaming like the rest of the world. I was a CD fan when streaming was limited to compressed Spotify, but nowadays streaming can run lossless easily. And my Amazon Music HD account also supports voice control. Just say “Alexa, play Africa by Toto” and immediately I can listen to this DSD quality track produced by my friend Elliot Scheiner in 192kHz 24 bits. I’ve ditched using cassettes, vinyl discs, CDs (including SACDs), VHS tapes, DVDs, BluRay discs and even floppy discs but I still have them in some storage boxes 😊
@@Scottlp2 You are right, a "CD transport" costing many 1000s of Dollars is indeed pure snake oil. It's sort of funny how CD drives used in computers are available for US$20 nowadays, where data integrity is far more important compared to playing music. Of course a US$20,000 CD transport usually look a lot more luxurious than a US$20 USB CD drive, but either can make your DAC and ears equally happy.
@@sidesup8286 In terms of convenience, I can access more than 100 million different music tracks on my Amazon Music HD account streamed lossless to my DAC in up to 192kHz 24 bits. I happen to know the guy, Ji Hui Li, with the largest private CD collection on the planet who has more than 3 million CDs and vinyl discs or more than 40 million tracks. Check the video I made when I was in one of his listening rooms; it's on my CZcams channel. I can start playback of any song just knowing title and artist in less than 3 seconds. His 3+ million discs are stored in wall cabinets in multiple rooms, archive room and in boxes. But even with my own around 300 CDs, I can spend minutes finding a CD and if I just want to play a single track from some CD, it's rather annoying when you are used to a modern streaming UI where you can freely build your playlists without bothering with albums.
Just love these people with imagination logic, all very contentious great fun in our hobby. Paul is so right. Cheers
Hi Paul. On another channel I watched a 30-40 minutes blind test of audiophiles listening to $5,000 to $10,000 transports and a 10-15 year old $500 transport. They did the blind A/B test of these 5 different transports and it turned out that the people really couldn't tell the difference and if there was any difference it was only very slight, convincing each of the listeners that it was much better to spend their money on the best DAC they could afford and the rest on something that was maybe at least visually appealing to them. So, I'm with you all the way.
The reason you don't hear a difference is that when the DAC gets the exact same data, there is no difference! Ironically, a CD drive isn't the most reliable data storage in existence because it's prone to scratches on the CD causing data errors. Your US$5 USB flash drive can sound 100% identical to a US$20,000 CD transport, if not better (due to scratches on a CD). I can respect those buying an expensive CD transport because they like all things expensive. If you already have a private jet and a few super cars in your garage, I guess a CD transport costing US$20,000 is a no-brainer, even you know it wont make the sound any better. People don't buy Rolex watches to get to their work in time either.
I’m pro cd 💿 transports / DAC’s and yes vinyl..in essence PHYSICAL MEDIA!
I’ve had more than a few songs “no longer available “ on my streaming services ..which now makes me think of going back to physically backing up my musical playlists.
Don’t forget ..you won’t own anything..sounds familiar.
Which songs are "no longer available" and on which music streaming service? I've never seen this on Amazon Music Unlimited. Rather, I very much enjoy the access to more than 100 million music tracks. With the support of lossless CD quality or up to 192kHz 24 bits (better than DSD-64), there really is no going back for me. My about 530 CD & vinyl disc collection is just not attracting to me when I now can enjoy the ease of use and speed of use of streaming without sacrificing quality. Also, when you get used to playing tracks and making your own favorite playlists rather than being bound by albums with many unattractive tracks, you realize streaming is just so much better.
@@ThinkingBetter I can't find Sly an Robbie's "Language Barrier" on any streaming service (this is an album, not a single track). There are several Danny Gatton albums I cannot find on streaming. Perhaps they were "never available" as opposed to "no longer available".
@@tonymuljat3306 It’s possible there is music made and not among the approx. 100 million tracks available on the leading streaming services. A friend of me has the world’s largest private collection of vinyl discs and CDs. While it probably takes an average 15 minutes to find an album in his huge collection, I can find an album within 3 seconds and have around 5 times more albums to choose from than he has.
@@tonymuljat3306 Having 100 million tracks available in lossless quality within seconds is still awesome even 0.01% of what I want to listen to is not available.
@@tonymuljat3306 Perhaps they are not popular enough? There is an approx. massive hundred million tracks to choose from already with leading streaming services.
you need to make sure you mention to use the digital coaxial out on the cheap dvd player into your dac, that is very important. If you run the analog RCA outs into your dac, youre only using your dac as a preamp, the CD audio is rendered through the likely crummy DAC in the dvd player.
Yes, any decent cheap CD player with a TOSLINK can output the data with as good quality as a US$20,000 transport. But audiophile gear is like cars. Any car can bring you to work and home again, but not any car is equally luxurious. For CD players used as transport, data is data and a US$20 USB CD player connected to a Mac mini can do equally as good as a discrete CD transport. A Mac Mini is good choice for a digital music source.
Agree fully with Paul. If I am not mistaken, many DVD players have a buffered output which can result in surprisingly good sound quality when used as a transport. Lukas Fikus blogged about performance he was getting from cheap DVD players long before he launched his Lampizator brand. He made some minor mod and received performance that rivaled some of the most costly CD transports.
I agree entirely. I upgraded my DirectStream Mk 1 DAC to the later Mk 2 and was amazed at the difference between the two. I have to admit that the recent firmware update to Mt Massive has been awesome.
Well, sound quality I'm not going to comment on, but there are other factors to consider:
One aspect of CD transports that isn't discussed nearly as often as it should is NOISE. I don't mean electrical noise, but _mechanical_ noise. Most cheap CD transports are primarily designed to read computer data discs and spin the CD at high rpm, creating much noise in the process that can be heard from a few yards away. Much less common nowadays are the dedicated proper music-CD transports that spin the CD at the Red-book standard low linear scanning velocity of 1.2 to 1.4 m/s (approx 500 rpm near the spindle, 200 rpm outer edge); those are _much_ quieter in operation and usually cannot be heard during the quiet passages.
Transports also differ significantly in their ability to deal with damaged discs and in their ability for error correction. They also differ in search speed, and only a minority of transports (mostly older transports) offer the facility for index skipping (not to be confused with track skipping; indices are sub-markers _within_ tracks).
Some transports mute the SPDIF output during scanning (track search); others don't. DACs respond differently to this behaviour and don't always play nice.
You can get all that with $300-$400 cd players from NAD, Yamaha, Cambridge Audio, etc…
You forgot about mechanical decoupling/isolation. Idk about newer CD players, but in my experience, some of the older ones are more susceptible to mistracking from vibration. Important if you are tight on space and listen at higher SPL's with ample lows. Not as important as a record player with a stylus in a groove, but still a consideration, in spite of the laser optically coupled to the data disk.
Other good arguments why a US$5 USB flash drive is superior to a US$20,000 transport lol. The flash drive makes no noise and doesn’t have issues with scratches causing data errors. And spend a few Dollars and you can contain your entire CD collection on solid state. Or just use modern lossless streaming and enjoy same audio fidelity but much more music to enjoy…with no noise from any spinning disc lol…
@@shipsahoy1793 What helps here is if the player chassis is heavy, it dampens down vibrations. A lot of players these days read the CDs using a computer CD-ROM drive, and simply have a larger buffer and multiple attempts at reading the same section of track if vibrations throw the laser off course. TBH, in static home-audio CD players I have personally never experienced tracking issues due to vibrations. The tracking issues I experienced were always due to either surface damage, eccentric pressings, excessive warping/undulations in the CD substrate, or worn cd-hold-down bearings.
@@ThinkingBetter I actually often do this. I load my CDs onto a hard-drive & USB flash drive, and often listen through a DAP. Best of both worlds; I still always have the CDs as a hard-copy with the few added benefits they offer over downloads.
I use Stellar Gain Cell DAC with Cambridge CXC transport, amazing sound.
Also Paul's video quality has been excellent on YT
I love cds❤
me too mate - they sound great! 👌
Used 1990s CD players from good brands have great CD mechanisms, much better than a $30 DVD player. And if you find one with a SPDIF output you'll have a very good transport for peanuts.
I still use my rotel rcd-970bx from 1995. Digital out to dac works perfect. Only thing i did with it was to change a plastic gear that open the drawer.
agree. if can find rotel rcd1072 for cheap, want to get it again. the first one the electronic just dead will not read cd.
Paul, you are so cool and funny, great channel
I guess I have been blessed with not having golden ears. Outside of speakers, amps, preamps and maybe DACs (maybe) I don't tend to hear much that constitutes Paul's "huge difference". Yes, I can hear differences between tube choices in tube amps and preamps, but they're not "huge" and as with so many things in high end audio it is rarely clear whether or not one difference is better than another. Just different. But, amongst audiophiles "huge" can mean a lot of things. And the audiophile industry runs on convincing us that any difference is a huge difference and every "difference" is an improvement.
thanks Paul and makes sense, I use older Sony 9000ES CD player connected to my Bryston BDA-1 DAC.. CDs sound great
Modern DACs do a wonderful job of reducing or even eliminating the jitter from average CD transports, which have also gotten much better than they used to be.
No,the new transports and DACs are only copies of the grand masters Sony, Philips and teac-tascam!
Pearl Accoustics had a rather long discussion on CD players a year back. Interesting watch.
There is an awful lot of space debris just itching to collide with the satellites that stream the music we enjoy. When that day becomes a reality, I will take comfort in the fact that I have kept my physical media and transports. 😏
There are a lot of wired connections between continents out there. A solar storm combined with a change of earth polarity (no shield) might be another threat for magnetic data or digital transmission. Same conclusion: plastic media.
CDs, a diesel generator and a shotgun is all you need to enjoy music during the zombie apocalypse.
Erm, no. It’s all cables unless you use satellite based internet at your end.
@@tonep3168 Um, yes. Just yesterday most of us lost cellular service. No one knows why. An asteroid is just an example of the many disasters that are not only possible, but inevitable. 😎
Will people who didn't like "living" come back as zombies too, and why? Oh I forgot about revenge.
I love cd, flacs and vinyl. all sound great, and all sound slightly different. there's good and bad in all parts of your hifi system, it's up to each individual to choose their kit and spend what they can afford.
In 2023 Harley Lovegrove did a great series about CD players on the Peals Acoustics CZcams channel.
If your budget is between 2000-3000 USD, i would look for the Rega Saturn-R. CD/DAC in one chassis, with all the input/output solutions you need.
♬ Hi from Michigan - Close to Brighton Michigan / Cool topic 👀
Let the audio wars begin
Some DACs are quite immune to input noise and jitter. Maybe Paul's own products fall into this category.
Other DACs are not immune - and might benefit greatly from a good CD transport and input cable. Not to mention AC power...
Great video Paul. I only listen to cd's. Quit streaming over a year ago. Cd's just sound better and have an assortment of cd players I use as transports into my various dac's. Cd's are far from dead especially in Europe. Everyone is entitled to their opinion yet the better quality cd players and transports do make a difference. Why, I do not know yet they do. I have heard it. Does this make it true for all you non believing people? No! And that is fine. I enjoy what I have and use and that is the real purpose! Enjoy your music no matter the platform. I like a lot of things that other's do not. So what! I am not telling you my stuff is best, just that I enjoy what I enjoy. I like that others do not like stuff I like and makes me different! Have a great day!!
Sometimes it all seems like a HiFI bubble; that in a generation or two most Hifi will be 30 dollar IEMs and a phone, maybe without even a cable.
@@clickbeetle2720 not as much, he discovered spotify...
I was wondering if a Mcintosh D150 DAC would sound fine with a Sony BDP-BX37 as a transport? I did read on a forum that that DAC doesn't resync the clock, so that's why I was wondering.
True! As long as the transport is decent you'll be fine!
Yes, and any CD player with TOSLINK is also a CD transport. As long as your DAC gets the exact data stored on the CD, the audio will be the same. Ironically, a computer USB CD drive for US$20 is already designed for reliably providing data because most computer files wont work if they are corrupted. Such US$20 drive can sound as good as a US$20,000 transport because the DAC will see the exact same data. If you are careless about your CDs and they have scratches, you might have some theoretical argument about how well errors are dealt with sonically, but if you are that careless about CDs, you better rip them to an SD media or just go streaming.
@@ThinkingBetterfor many years I thought the same thing. I have an Audiolab CD transport that I absolutely love. I had trouble playing parts of a particular CD and I incorrectly assumed something was wrong with the transport (it was the CD). I ordered a Cambridge Audio transport and was very surprised to discover that, yes, it absolutely sounded different than my Audiolab transport. Not necessarily better or worse, but definitely different. Same DAC (Mytek Liberty), same amp (Rogue Audio Sphinx V3), same cables, etc. I switched back and forth between the two dozens of times because I was sure that “bits are bits” and a digital signal from any component must sound the same as any other. It doesn’t.
@@tedhersh9095 When the DAC gets the same exact data it also sounds exactly the same, however, CDs can be damaged and the error compensation can sound more or less close to the original. Such error correction artifacts is one reason I abandoned CDs and went for modern bit-perfect lossless CD (and better) quality streaming. With streaming you can get error free digital music nowadays and even get much better than CD quality like with my Amazon Music Ultimate account I can stream in up to 192kHz 24 bits lossless music with absolutely zero errors. If you consider improving your audio system to get better and reliable optimum audio fidelity, definitely go with modern streaming if you have such issues you mention. Also, streaming can run asynchronously avoiding jitter issues. But the biggest benefit is that you have insanely more music available and don’t have to be forced to play CD albums with tracks you don’t like. Making your own playlists is a huge benefit.
@@tedhersh9095 Those problems indicate you have scratched CDs and you hear differences in error correction algorithms. You should switch to modern lossless high quality streaming where your music data is always without errors and you can stream in even better than CD quality.
@@tedhersh9095 Data is data if the data values are the same and they arrive in time to the DAC. Thus if you hear a difference it’s either due to some software bug or data errors on your CDs being compensated differently.
I disagree. I ran my vintage Marantz CD63SE thru a PS Audio Stellar Gain Cell Dac and could hear very little if any difference. I updated the Marantz to an Audiolab 6000CDT and I heard a major difference. I think a good source & a good DAC is needed. One without the other won't help much.
or you can rip all the wav files and dsd from your cd and sacd. Save it on your home network and play it on your dac. You can make a library, a playlist, browse and play at will. Best sound quality and more convenient.
Great video. 👌🏽
Removing a bottleneck from your system will enable you to find the other bottlenecks. At a certain point the transport will be the bottleneck that matters. Then replacing it will give you the greatest improvement.
Please describe how a CD transport can be a bottleneck?
@@tonep3168 jitter due to bad clocking galvanic interference
@@D1N02 nothing that the dac wont mitigate. Galvanic interference is not an issue if the dac is designed properly or you use optical.
@@tonep3168 ignorance is bliss
“Theory of Constraints”
My old Sony Bluray player with coaxial out to Marantz receiver sounds just fine.
You are so right!
Still running a Philips CDM--9, it will out-live me...
Is DAC technology improvement over the year faster than CD transport? Does it make sense to put more money on transport if it is true?
First, great music
2nd, good enough recordings (but don't get me started on great sounding ~1960 Columbia jazz)
3rd, everything you can control
I guess I'm a musicphile happy to learn from audiophiles.
What do you find so sonically wonderful about 1960’s Columbia recordings. I’ve been an audio enthusiast and jazz lover for 63 years now and I know that the musicianship is excellent but the SQ is mediocre. Blue Note, Verve, Prestige, Impulse and Riverside come to mind for 1960s jazz recordings. Columbia and Warner Brothers never did it for me. A big part of my life was attending live music venues like jazz clubs and concerts in in New York City and other venues in the tri-state area so I believe that I have pretty extensive jazz knowledge to compare live to vinyl or digital recordings. I also made lasting friendships with musicians like Sonny Rollins and Freddie Hubbard and at present I have a great relationship with Emmet Cohen, one of the best jazz pianists in the business. Sonny Rollins once told me that I have a real understanding for what he was trying to accomplish with his music and he meant it when he said it to me. All of what I have just said is just my life experiences and my own opinion just like you have yours.
In Harvey's blind listening tests from Pearl Acoustics showed that over a Toslink cable, there were no Audible differences between all cd players tested. The same was not true using the cd players internal dac's.
This can also be tested by feeding the Toslink signal direct into a PC and analysing the bit stream. This has also been done countless times and videos exist on CZcams showing the process. Again no difference between transports or using the data read direct off the cd by a PC.
DAC make a difference digital cd transport over Toslink, USB, HDMI or other is a wash
rabble rabble!!
I’m not going to enter into the territory of how to prioritise your hifi budget when making component purchasing decisions. But you’d do well to think in terms of being ‘price appropriate’. If you’ve invested $20000 in a pair of speakers, then pairing them with a $299 amp is highly unlikely to do your speakers full justice.
I have a highly resolving hifi system, including a mid-tier CD transport. I also have a cheap and cheerful, entry level, 4K Blu-ray player. If I use the Blu-ray player to play CDs, the deterioration in playback quality, is subtle, if it exists at all. Difficult to tell when you’re having to make volume level compensation.
I use my computer for all my digital…there, I said it
USB can be tamed with an interface/isolator
Plenty of output
I burn all my CDs and digital albums to M-Disc lossless and also store on SSD dedicated hard-drive
Use a good/great USB DAC and you are golden
There is no need to listen to a CD player/transport
Take the money you save on the CD player/transport and put it into you DAC
No matter how much you spend on the transport that money would be better spent on a DAC
When you get here, you can stop or then get a $10k transport
Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC
$13,500.00
Dac is only as good as the digital signal it receives- I believe it's a balance ' with cd playback ' I own many cd Transports Audiolab 6000/7000/9000 Cdt I use my Sony cdp 605 esd as a transport and my Pioneer DVD player and Sony bluray player '
And for the price the audiolab 7000cdt is a winner 🏆 even though the 9000 barley edges the 7000cdt out maybe by 2-3 percent investing the extra $700 bucks difference between them should go into the dac '
Before you mentioned synergy being the most important. So which is it? Buy the expensive component, cut the corner in the rest, or take the money you have, and put it to other components instead of just one. Great speakers can sound absolutely wrong with wrong amp, source or pre. Even a cable, like Kimber, can ruin a good pair of speakers. There’s some gas for your fire.🔥
Just buy a Sony SACD player. Cheap and awesome.
I actually agree with Paul, that DACs are way more important to sound quality, but "huge" is a real audiophile BS term. The differences between 2 transports aren't "HUGE" if the DAC is identical. Similarly, the only "night and day" differences between components is having one plugged in to electricity and not the second. Think about what "huge" and "night and day" differences ACTUALLY mean, outside of HiFi BS...
High-end audio: Where a difference you can barely hear is HUGE!
yeah. sure. uhh - huhh.
If you don't like the record, change your turntable 🤗
@spacemissing "High-end audio: Where a difference you can barely hear is HUGE!"
On what stereo equipment did you test CD players or transports, which brought you to your conclusion?
For this subject, absolutely it’s snake oil and people pretending to be very clever when they’re actually not, quite the opposite. This is one subject where many people should just not open their mouths and share their opinion, as it just exposes just how little they actually know.
@@NoEgg4u
Naw, third-hand information.
Yes, Bose 901 to Aspen FR-30 is huge. $500 to $5,000 CD transport, is not huge. Chevy Sonic to Chevy Corvette is huge. Porsche 911 GT2 to Porsche 911 GT3 is not huge. Let’s stop abusing the language.
In my own experience, DVD players of different makes always have a harsher more edgy character to their sound versus actual CD players when used as transports. While they work, my advice to everyone is generally that at the least, they should find a choice of source that was originally intended for music playback as opposed to a DVD player as they'll have a far better listening experience overall. For someone who can't find that, my recommendation is always to use a Playstation or Playstation 2. They can be found for extremely low prices today, and the sound quality of all variations via the optical out is wonderful, IMO, ecclipsing anything to be found in a DVD player.
Older cd players were better the quality of parts was better i still own one
My Oppo 103 as good as anything.
Perhaps an Oppo 103 or 203, a Panasonic UB 820, or a Sony UBP X800 MK II are possibly decent "spinners'.
the Oppos are outstanding spinners
This channel belongs in comedy
cd transportet is last to upgrade. Vinyl player far more effective on sound
Like Mercedes Benz says "The best or nothing".
Quote: "I would rather appreciate that which I cannot afford, than afford that which I cannot appreciate." - anonymous
@@HareDeLune me too
First to comment! I recently bought an Onkyo Integra DPS-9.1 player to match my Onkyo Integra P-304/M-504 setup and I use it as a transport to my EverSolo DMP-A6 Master Edition.
Cheers from Montreal.
"First to comment!"
Very proud. Never give up. You are on your way. You are the envy of many.
Yes, an ok transport with a top DAC will sound better than an ok DAC with a top transport.
Every dac over $200 will sound identical if they are working correctly. There is no magic in the overpriced dacs. They all do the same job.
@@BrianHall-Oklahoma
Yeah, parts is parts. If you believe that I have bridge in SF that I own, it's for sale. Contact me, lol!
Let's keep in mind that Paul is a salesman too . Do you think he's going to tell you that his $2000 speaker wires are a shameless ripoff?
In life, things important for one person aren’t important for another person. Soon, dacs and transports will be in museum
I am sorry but I am not spending megabucks to play something I get at thrift stores for a buck or 2. But if you do its all good.
All functioning CD transports and players will sound identical when using the same dac. All they do is put out the bits. If one sounds different it is malfunctioning. A $25 usb dvd drive will put out the exact same bits as an overpriced > $1000 cd transport or player. Don't waste your money on the transports. Spend money where it matters -- the speakers.
Little to none. If the transport is working within specs, it will make no difference what so ever. Unless you like the sound of snake oil. Stupid people thinking in analogue terms. A CD transport can only affect the sound if it has something wrong with it and its outputting constant errors in the data stream to the DAC, and that will manifest as audible glitches that even a rat could hear. Some people and their money are very easily parted, arguably deservedly so.
Let's put in a different way - if you have a good DAC you will notice the better transport. But if the DAC is mediocre the best transport will not make a difference.
Can you please explain your reasoning for your statement please?
CD transport my butt...CD media is on the way out and current products are using ancient CD drive components as the R&D in CD technology is gone with no engineers working on designing new drives. I hate to reveal the obvious, but your DAC will sound identical when the music data it clocks through the DAC chip is identical. Spending a fortune on a "CD transport" is quite ridiculous when any US$5 USB flash drive is superior on data integrity (no scratches). Your PowerPoint presentation doesn't look any different wether you save the file on a CD, hard drive or solid state memory. Likewise with music and video files. In actuality, data errors are not even accepted on almost all other data file types thus data integrity is nowadays not a concern for music at all for modern media. Ironically, CD media is somewhat prone to data errors due to scratches. The inconvenience of using CDs is also a major nuisance compared to modern streaming, where you already can stream bit-perfect lossless better than CD quality. Belief in CD transports by magic sounding better is equivalent to belief in flat earth. Some percentage of people just wanna have a different opinion even it defies facts. Now, playing CDs or vinyl discs is a more engaging experience and there is a point to be made about that. And it's also possible that some tracks have been manipulated when streamed and sounds better on CD. It's an often used argument but rarely do you see any actual evidence for it. BTW, I know the one guy having the world's largest collection of music discs of more than 2 million discs (see video on my channel from one of many of his listening rooms), but gosh it's so super inconvenient compared to my Amazon Music HD account providing even more music much much easier and in CD lossless quality or better.
You forget to use the word snake oil ;-)
Boy haven't some people gotten lazy when slapping on a cd is said to be "inconvenient." Maybe some people are yearning for the day when we won't have to chew our food. Those 2 things are about equal in effort. If streaming sounded better than cds; I'd have a streamer. It all depends on what cd playback equipment you have. Don't diss a format until you have heard, or better yet lived with the absolute best in cd playback. Otherwise you are just talking out your nose. There is reason to believe that cd is showing signs of coming back. People who are in their 50s and 60s got into music via cds and they can remember how fun it was. They are now discovering that the modern cd players generally sound way better than most 1980s cd players.
@@sidesup8286 In terms of convenience, I can access more than 100 million different music tracks on my Amazon Music HD account streamed lossless to my DAC in up to 192kHz 24 bits. I happen to know the guy with the largest CD collection on the planet who has more than 1.6 million CDs each (around 24 million tracks in total). Check the video I made when in one of his listening rooms; it’s on my CZcams channel. I can play any song knowing title and artist in less than 3 seconds. His 1.6 million CDs are stored on walls in multiple rooms and in some archive room and in boxes. But even with my own small CD collection of around 300 CDs, I can spend minutes finding a CD and if I just want to play a single track from some CD it’s rather annoying when you are used to a modern streaming UI. And just to be clear, I used cassette tape in my teens in the 70s, recorded music from radio stations on it, later in 1978 I got my first Technics SL3300 vinyl player at age 13 and in 1985 at age 20 I got my first CD player from Denon that I enjoyed using with my Stax SL-44 electrostatic headphones. I spent most of my money at that time buying CDs and vinyl discs. Some times I could spend most of a Saturday (no school) biking to a record store just to end up buying a single vinyl disc or CD that I brought home and played over and over again. Looking at the album artworks and the physics of the vinyl or CD cover/disc made all that extra effort tolerable. Later I got a job in audio engineering and has developed several products I’m sure you know. I of course can understand your view, but when I started to realize I am not losing on audio fidelity while now I can easily explore and play whatever I want without having to spend time and money buying it, I became sold on streaming like the rest of the world. I was a CD fan when streaming was limited to compressed Spotify, but nowadays streaming can run lossless easily. And my Amazon Music HD account also supports voice control. Just say “Alexa, play Africa by Toto” and immediately I can listen to this DSD quality track produced by my friend Elliot Scheiner in 192kHz 24 bits. I’ve ditched using cassettes, vinyl discs, CDs (including SACDs), VHS tapes, DVDs, BluRay discs and even floppy discs but I still have them in some storage boxes 😊
@@Scottlp2 You are right, a "CD transport" costing many 1000s of Dollars is indeed pure snake oil. It's sort of funny how CD drives used in computers are available for US$20 nowadays, where data integrity is far more important compared to playing music. Of course a US$20,000 CD transport usually look a lot more luxurious than a US$20 USB CD drive, but either can make your DAC and ears equally happy.
@@sidesup8286 In terms of convenience, I can access more than 100 million different music tracks on my Amazon Music HD account streamed lossless to my DAC in up to 192kHz 24 bits. I happen to know the guy, Ji Hui Li, with the largest private CD collection on the planet who has more than 3 million CDs and vinyl discs or more than 40 million tracks. Check the video I made when I was in one of his listening rooms; it's on my CZcams channel. I can start playback of any song just knowing title and artist in less than 3 seconds. His 3+ million discs are stored in wall cabinets in multiple rooms, archive room and in boxes. But even with my own around 300 CDs, I can spend minutes finding a CD and if I just want to play a single track from some CD, it's rather annoying when you are used to a modern streaming UI where you can freely build your playlists without bothering with albums.