Bang For Your Buck Best Value CD Transport


I don't want to know what is the very best CD transport to use with a DAC regardless of price.

I want to know what people think is a transport that works and sounds great, and is a good value for the money.

New and/or used, whatever you think....
bowbow

Showing 7 responses by philnyc

My understanding is that an off-shoot from Philips (www.daisy-laser.nl) has some sort of arrangement where either they bought all the remaining stock from Philips and still have them, or maybe even have a license to continue making them.
I have tried using the Pioneer 563A as a transport and thought it was less than decent compared directly to a Panasonic RP91. Admittedly, the RP91 was a lot more expensive, but it wasn't even close.

If you are into modded stuff, I am a big fan of the Empirical Audio transport mods to the Sony S7700. I use this one as my reference transport with a Dodson DA-218 DAC. Have compared it to transports from Mark Levinson, 47 Labs, Esoteric, and have found it to be "in the ballpark" with all of these.
Sogood1,

I do realize he did say bang-for-the-buck, but the original poster asked for "best transport regardless of price". And I did compare the Pioneer 563A against some other budget players (eg. Toshiba 3950, Panasonic RP56) and didn't find the Pioneer to be particularly better or worse as a transport compared to these others.

And yeah, the Empirical mods are expensive (with all the available mods for the S7700, it was about $1300). Still, I have yet to find anything that clearly beats it in any price category.

With the budget players, I'd strongly recommend making sure that you use a true 75ohm digital cable, and that the length be between 1.5m-2m....
Woops...I guess I read the original post wrong. He did say "I DON'T want to know"...I thought he said "I want to know".

Doh! Good thing my hearing still works... ;-)
Matchstikman, I actually had my Pioneer 563A modded by Audience...essentially changed all the caps with Auricaps and all the wiring with Audience hookup wire, and a few other parts replaced (no re-design of the player, just upgraded a variety of parts)...and the performance improved significantly. Still not up to where the Empirical S7700 is at, but it made a $150 player sound like a more expensive one, and the transport section was improved too.
Babbabob...yes, Daisy Laser just offers the CD-PRO2M mechanism. It is where [email protected] (and any other kit makers) get their transport parts...