CD Transports

When I say "Built like a tank" I'm speaking from an Engineering point of view.  I am an Electrical/Electronics Engineer that has designed built amplifiers, filters,  and electronic circuitry over my career. 

I typically mean designed and built very well.

many of these have four DACS two for each side for redundancy.

As I said, i have sat and compared these units to many many other CD player/transports, and I really had a hard time finding any that beat them as transports.

Also, in response to one comment, i have experienced no sound degradation.   No scattered light, etc.

Also, the BDP-09,  DV-79AV and the BDP-95 are very nice as CD players  also because they have excellent internal DACS.  

Just saying.  With people constantly upgrading to the latest and greatest Blue Ray players with the latest bells and whistles.  They sometimes forget that some units (Pioneer Elite, Sony ES, etc.) were very well designed and built as audiophile level units.

enjoy

Yes, I’m aware you don’t feel as though you experience scattered light. You’re used to it. You would be aware of it by its absence. Same goes for seismic type vibration. You get used to the distortion/noise. Most people believe the CD laser is monochromatic and many believe it’s red. So what else is new? Enjoy the music 🎵

Just to clarify, isn't it so that the new DACs are vastly superior to what they put in the older CD machines? Thus it makes best sense to get a transport because one is usually bypassing the built-in DAC on older players. So some older players may have excellent DACs but they can't measure up to something such as what I use, the Exogal Comet. To me that't the big advantage of the Audiolab--I'm getting a great transport and not paying for some internal component I don't need and will never use. Of course I do like vintage components and wouldn't hesitate to get one of the older CDPs for an early system, but that is a non-performance issue. 

The trouble is that for virtually all CD transports the damage is done prior to sending the digital data to the DAC. The damage is done within the first Picosecond as soon as the laser tries to read the physical data on the disc. Garbage in garbage out 🔁 🤗

I don't  necessarily agree with some of the statements here.  If you address clocking, jitter, etc. then a good dac is a good dac.  Either it does what it's supposed to do (correctly convert a digital stream to analog) or it doesn't.  

The systems that go back and forth to make sure that it got the correct data before proceeding, multiple laser pick ups, error correction, jitter, all kinds of things.  These all add costs to designs and systems.

i initially was speaking about transports only, then added a few units that have pretty darn good internal DACS.

Now back in the day, these were near top  units both in performance and costs.  move forward to today, these "used" units for the money are pretty hard to beat.  And that was the point.

You take a top of the line DAC today and get a top of the line Transport both today and older transport unit and compare the two into the same DAC.  Jaw dropping differences?  no.  A solidly built transport with good pick up mechanism is just that.  

I've also compared top of the line DACS of today with CD players and DACS of the past and guess what?  differences? yes.  Jaw dropping, not in many cases.  Especially DAC vs DAC.  Discrete analog output stages and very well designed and built power supplies matter.

but, this is just me.  Don't get me wrong, there are technological advances.   but if budget is an issue, I would invest in a nice DAC and get a used but very nice Transport.  Especially if you could synch the internal clocks.

enjoy