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  3. 169613-6041

New Transport? / Streamer? / CD Player?

Looking for help, I want to improve my CD playback and my bottleneck is my CD transport. I'm using a Cambridge Audio CXC transport with an Audio Mirror Tubadour III SE. I love how my AM DAC frames the music so a new transport seems to be the logical path. I have 500+ CDs and primarily listen to LPs now. I would like up the quality of my CD playback thinking this will be my long term path as I get older, yikes!

I seem to have 3 options:

1. Buy a quality transport, these products look interesting:

Pro-ject CD Box RS2 T (needs LPS to sound best?)
Jays Audio CDT2-Mk3 (can't turn off upsampling?)
Audio Note CDT Zero or One

2. Buy a streamer that can either store my ripped CDs or can read them from an external HD?

3. Sell my DAC and buy a one box CD player?

#1 seems to be the most logical but that's mainly because I have limited experience with #2. I have used various laptops but found that my CA CXC outperforms it considerably when playing CDs. I know you can modify computers to do a better but it seemed to be much more complicated and expensive path just to play a CD. I see there are some streamers that are like dedicated and modified computers, some have internal storage others with USB ports so you have attach a hard drive. Are any of these work considering? Keeping in mind my primary objective is to improve my CD playback vs convenience of working from an app. Is a streamer a more complicated device, needing more engineering to deal with noise or vibration issues? Some are very expensive but aren't they just dedicated audio computers.
Are there other transports that I should consider?

Another option is sell off my DAC and buy a one box CD player. Relative the cost of adding transport my budget would be about $5K. Are there any one box CD player options that I should consider? I went for the AM DAC because of how the DAC frames the music, it's an R2R DAC and the music is very fluid and musical. I'm sold on this direction for CD playback the musical experience is similar to vinyl.

Any help appreciated! Auditioning any of the above is impossible where I live.
128x128musichead

Showing 5 responses by ghdprentice

ghdprentice
6,364 posts
 
I would recommend investing in a good DAC and separate streamer. If you can afford a good streamer and DAC you will have no use for a CD transport. A good Streamer and DAC will sound as good and much of the time better than a CD transport or ripped (files copied to an external source). My 2,000 CD serve as wall diffusion panels. Qobuz and other streaming services offer much of their content in higher resolution than CD ant they sound better with a good complimentary DAC and Streamer for about the cost of one cd purchase per month. While vinyl provides additional resolution with greater investment the CD does not. It is fixed with respect to other digital formats. With a high quality streaming service your library is nearly infinite. My library is virtual and huge now. My streamer has storage space, and when I put it into my system it found all my ripped files (if you need to rip, just do it on a PC) on my network, so I coped to the streamer. I have not used them in many months. A good streamer is reliable. 

Many folks cannot let go of the disks they bought (sunk cost). If not upgrade your DAC as much as possible using your existing player as transport. Then hopefully enough time 
ghdprentice
6,364 posts
 
There has been endless discussions about for ages about CD/Streamer. It is important to realize the answer on the basis of cost/sound quality is not static… it is changing rapidly now. Ten years ago the answer between the two would be CD if you want high end sound quality without an unlimited budget. The answer today is probably either for roughly the same cost. Over the next ten year the answer will be streamer. Already a number of companies manufacturing CD players and CD transports have ceased production. So going the streamer / DAC route is future oriented. Going the CD route is putting off the transition. Nothing wrong with it… it is a pursuit for enjoyment. But if you look towards the future you are likely to have a higher performance system in ten years from now if you go Streamer / DAC vs CD player.
ghdprentice
6,364 posts
 
@charles1dad

Charles, what I am saying is not conjecture it is a forecast based on my knowledge and experience. I have been working in the high tech electronics industry for over forty years while being an audiophile. I have worker with electrical engineers, R&D groups, marketing people, and inside the global electronics manufacturing chain. There is a fundamental difference between vinyl and the digital end of reproduction. My forecast rests on a very solid footing.
ghdprentice
6,364 posts
 
In many ways the discussion is all about exactly the same audio stream, but how you chop it up and how many boxes you want to buy to get the music to your system.

All start with a computer file at a company that desires to sell it. They can copy that file to a CD, and sell the physical media, or put the files up for purchase through a download service, or put it on line for streaming.

As a consumer, we need a: transport (only if we buy CDs), a streamer, and a DAC before inputting it into our stereo. We can buy:

A CD player - physical transport, streamer, DAC
A CD transport - physical transport, streamer and separate DAC
A Streamer - internet receiver (with or without storage) and separate DAC
A single box internet receiver, streamer, DAC

It’s a question of how you get the files and how many box solution you want. The quality is all about the implementation of the solution you buy.




ghdprentice
6,364 posts
 
Every component imposes an imprint on the sound.
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