CD Transports


Since CD transports just spin the discs, would I be justified in spending a lot of money on one, or buy a reasonably priced one (both units being well respected), and put the extra money into a more expensive DAC?
daj2832

Showing 4 responses by lowrider57

If you own the Direct Stream DAC, then you have a device which uses a FPGA for excellent jitter reduction. 
@curiousjim , why order the ProJect DAC and then move to the BiFrost Multibit? They are two very different animals, which I would imagine, have very different sonics. The S2 uses a Sabre DAC chip and supports MQA. The Schiit is a NOS ladder dac using an Analog Devices dac chip, which produces an organic sonic signature.

Are you interested in MQA and DSD? I’m curious.

I assume you’ll be using the Oppo as a transport.



+1 @curiousjim.

@instlouis, in addition to the excellent SQ produced using I2S, the PSA memory transport reads the disc, then uses a buffer (FPGA) to clock and error correct  the data before outputting the signal. The result is very low jitter and noise being transferred to the DAC.


The I2S format that PSA and Wyred4Sound use transfers the clock and datastream separately from transport to DAC. The result is less noise/interference than S/PDIF, USB, optical which transfer all signals together.
An HDMI cable is used to carry the individual streams.

I used it between PS Audio components and found it to be very smooth with low noise, presenting a realistic image.