Silly Question...does a transport have a "sound" ?

Oh man does this thread ever have the potential for member polarization! I read claims that Tranxport X has "analog" qualities or that Transport Y benefits greatly from power cord upgrades. These products should be the absolute easiest to test electronically.

As to what sonic results come from mis-timing, etc., should be unimportant. Cliaming this transport is more analog than another is silly at best....they either extract the data from the disk, clock it and assemble it into a datastream correctly or they don't. With the low frequency sampling rate here, there is so much time to do all this, including error correction to a point where transports should make virtually little to no difference. I guess the key is how well this is done. But this is cheap to do.

I read over and over here that transports make a huge difference. Do they or is it more the problems caused by the digital cabling between them and the DAC?

I have done countless comparisons of transports and DACs and time and time again, the difference between DACs is huge with the Manley Reference DAC from the late 90s continuing to be my favorite performer. Each DAC I have tried has had very immediate sonic differences. But my experience with transports is not at all the same: from the Pioneer PD65, Muse Model 8, Theta Data II, even the Pioneer CLD-92 laserdisc player as a transport, the differences are subtle at best. Swapping digital cables made a greater difference which caught me by surprise. So I suspect this is the weak link in the digital chain where susceptibility to errors is the greatest.

I have wanted to try a Spectral 3000, CEC TL-1X, Accuphase DP-90, etc., but these are expensive beasts that my experience here tells me could be better spent to upgrade my Maggie 3.5s to 20.1s, biamp the Maggies, upgrade phono stage or preamp, etc. There are just clearly other links in the system that bring huge improvements compared to the transport link. Maybe the Muse and Pioneer units are truly excellent compared to the competition.

So before you spend a lot, try some out and do not be surprised at not hearing much difference.

John

Hmmm.....

"Those with limited knowledge, lack listening skills, have only a basic understanding of theory with no test equipment will tell you what they think."

I guess the above statement clearly applies to me. What knowledge do I need to have to interchange transports in my system and hear or not hear a difference? I can do this with ARC, BAT and Aesthetix phono stages and hear dramatic differences immediately. I can do the same with Manley, Electrocompaniet and Muse DACs and hear as significant a difference. And the same goes for line stages, power amps, tonearm cables and interconnects between the line stage and amp....and even the "controversial power cord" on my phono stage and line stage.....immediate and dramatic differences.

"Obviously, their response is based on their limited understanding and lack of experience with the subject, not on actual observations."

So my ears and mind are biased that I will not hear a difference with transports and yet I do with power cords in my system? Come on Sean, give some of us a little more credit than this. In my quest to optimize my analog and digital sources, I have put much effort to try many products and my comments above indicated my listening observations. Whether or not I have an ascilloscope, logic analyzer, FFT spectrum analyzer, etc., will not affect whether or not I hear a difference. I replied here with my own experiences and suggested to the member here who posted this question to listen himself and not be surprised at hearing very little if at all any changes.....and I stand by that recommendation. In all honesty, I have yet to hear a superfi transport in the $5k+ range and I made this point clear in the closing of my posting. So perhaps this higher priced level where the big differences begin.

So rather than bash people here on their "incompetence", a posting on your own specific knowledge and experiences here with the differences between some transports you have tried would have brought more value to this thread.

John

Sean...thank you for your comments. I can not speak for the comments of others here that put a "negative" spin on this issue. I agree with your statement here that people make general statements without backing them up with their own experiences/knowledge.

I see this problem a lot with interconnect cable threads here that the "best" cable must always be at the front of the system when my experiences have proven this to be not the case time and time again. And it is frustrating when such generalities are made as it steers people, who seek to learn, in the wrong direction.

In the context of my attempts to find a transport that stood out from the crowd, I listed the models I own and have tried with my favorite DACs. And I was honest to write that I simply could not hear a "repeatable" difference. How many reviewers out there ever claim they honestly did not hear a difference? None that I recall and yet every now and then I walk away from an audition or comparison not hearing a discernible difference. When I thought there was something different with the transports, upon going back to the previous, I simply was not sure. But when I changed to a cheapo digital cable (given to me by an audiophile friend) to an MIT digital cable, I could hear more silence between the notes and noticeably more decays. I thnk this is what other writers here have refered to as less smearing. And I have read here that the MIT cable is not that good either. If anything, I would have expected the transports to be more dramatic and the cables less.

I have put much effort to improve my digital playback to provide the musicality, the harmonic richness / ambience / bloom, etc., that my forever evolving phono setup has provided for 22+ years now.

As for Nrchy's comments, I agree that every component has a sonic signature. But many out there have very similar if not almost exact characteristics in this regard. I did not claim ALL transports sound the same. Perhaps a CEC or Spectral or Accuphase or the EmmLabs inserted here could bring the house down. I am eager to try this out.

Also, if the system's resolving potential is not there, such sonic differences that exist between components can clearly be masked. My system (Clearudio Ref/Accurate, Aesthetix Io, Manley Ref Dac, BAT 31SE, Wolcott Presence, Magnepan 3.5 all cabled with NBS Statement except for SilverAudio tonearm cable and one NBS Pro power cable on the DAC) is not a top tier system, but it gives me the ability to hear differences in nearly all other links.

With the transports I tried, and in the context of my system's capability, the sonic results were simply the same.

And yes, I would like to learn about the lower cost transports models that performed so well. Such a product may be just what I have been searching for; it sure beats spending $5-10k on something that brings on a marginal improvement. If people get upset that they spent way too much, at least they won't make that mistake again. And look at it this way: paying less for more performance - don't we all dream of this?

So yes Sean, please share your experiences and knowledge on the Hovland and others.

John

Sean: Thank you for the history on the Hovland models. Much appreciated for your time to cover this. Perhaps their experiences are very parallel to mine as my 12 year-old PD-65 continues to do an incredible job as a transport.

Other than the $3k Magnepan 3.5 speakers, all other components in my system are in the $5k+ range. The fact that the PD-65 continues to work so well here says much about its performance. With this driving the Manley Ref DAC, some audio snobs would say this is like putting a Geo Metro engine in a Ferarri; but this simply is not the case at all.

And the PD-65 is built quite ruggedly....with a fairly decent remote. I simply have not been able to justify buying some other unit simply because mine has a "Pioneer" label on it. But my quest to find that one transport that stands way out from the crowd continues to this day.

John