How does a Transport effect sound?

The title assigned to me by my current employer is "systems engineer".

FWIW.

GK,

Scientists care about actual objective data points and analysis.

Audiophiles often care more about totally subjective tweaks.

Ain't nothing wrong with that.   I know there are others out there  who must care.

audioengr,

Based on the data I have seen ripping thousands of CDs and having DBPoweramp detect and show the errors, I would concur that when errors occur you will hardly ever if ever actually hear them.

However, they may not be as uncommon as some might think.

Also I agree, in reality and for all practical purposes, jitter is a much bigger concern and has stood in the way of good sound with CDs for many for many years. Much better but certainly not extinct these day, at least with cheaper low quality transports. Ripping and streaming is much more reliable. Even good quality and modest cost streamer/DAC combos can deliver very good, detailed, non fatiguing sound.

For a lot of insight into errors inherent in reading CD optical disks, try ripping a CD with DBpoweramp and learn.

It will give you actual metrics using reference database web service that gets updated and enhanced over time  as new user rips occur.   It provides metrics on how accurate the rip is compared to the current reference maintained in the database.     No need to guess.   More popular CDs can have up to 200 rips for reference available during ripping in the database.  Very cool!

Good quality CDs tend to rip fast and clean using my laptop’s disk reader. I’d estimate 60-70% of the time. More errors encountered and longer ripping time needed for rereads maybe 20-25% of the time with visually good quality disks. . Damaged CDs with visible scratches or flaws will almost always require multiple rereads to assure acuracy and take longer.

If you turn the accurate rip feature off, rips happen faster and you will be told how many errors occur per track.

The good news is that in most cases you will have to listen very hard on a really good system to hear most errors that do result with accurate rip off. I know of one CD out of several thousand I have ripped where the errors in the form of dropouts are clearly heard every time streamed.

Is there any CD transport that can do all that in real time as required? Also provide quality metrics as reading? I do not know of one. Most people would rather not know and never will need to I suppose.

That’s why I never play CDs anymore. I rip them to my library correctly once then stream from there.