2. digital
  3. 147783-122613

Is a CD Transport the Best Digital Source?

So I’ve gone back and forth between CD players/transports, Blu-Ray/DVD players, computers, phones, and more for my digital source, but I always seem to end up going back to CD for the best sound I can get out of my system. I find that I enjoy mixing it up and enjoy the sound of each source, but when it comes down to what is the absolute best in my system, I just keep going back to a CD player or CD transport.

For awhile I though my laptop streaming digital to a DAC was my best source until I went back to a CD transport and realized that everything was “crisper,” especially the bass. The bass and midbass seem like they are more in unison, hit harder and hit quicker (less mush). 

Does anyone find this to be the case and why is this? Is it just an economics problem, e.g. dollar for dollar a dedicated CD player has more of its costs sunk into music playing compared to a computer which is also built for running an OS, playing video, etc.?

Bonus question: Why does bass get better with better gear? It seems to me that bass would be the easiest to reproduce for a DAC. It’s this big, slow wave that is massively oversampled for what is needed. I would think any improvements would be up in the treble where you are near the Nyquist frequency and have to deal with phase-effects of low pass filters, etc. 
128x128mkgus

Showing 2 responses by dgarretson

dgarretson
2,588 posts
 

@jim204 Interesting that the JCAT USB card made a major improvement for you.  I have a JCAT NET Femto ethernet card on order for installation in a QNAP i5 NAS that hosts Roon core in conjunction with SOtM EN-to-USB endpoints.  I'll try powering the JCAT externally with either a SOtM or Chinese Zerozone PS.  If that goes well, I may try comparing a JCAT USB card in the QNAP to the SOtM pieces-- which in my system are souped up with a Hynes SR7 linear power supply and clock links to a 10mhz master clock that also synchronizes the Esoteric DAC.

So far my computer audio set-up equals or surpasses my Esoteric K-01X transport.  The performance of computer audio implementations vary widely-- which is reflected in the wide variation of responses on this topic.

dgarretson
2,588 posts
 
@jim204 Thanks, I was unaware of Sound Forge.  I also record hi-res streams in real time, but using a Tascam DA-3000.  The PCM flat files are ported into Vinyl Studio, which automatically segments tracks and pulls metadata down from the net.
More to discover