CD data is encoded using Reed-Solomon error correction. The job of the transport is to read the bits (1's and 0's pits/no pits) off the disk including the additional data for error correction and place it all into a buffer for software error correction and for eventual feed to a DAC.
After error correction the result is two channels of 65536 bit word data streams at 44.1 KHz or a data stream rate of 1411200 bits/sec.
There is not much rocket science to this and, as it is all digital, the data will either be correct or incorrect. Incorrect words will cause skipping of the sound as their remains a gap or blank in the data stream.
The relative difference in transports therefore will be related to how easily it skips and how robustly it reads all the words from say a scratched or damaged disk.
The output bitstream from one transport to another should therefore be the same provided there are no skips.
It is downstream of the transport itself where differences can occur. The DAC conversion requires an accurate clock speed to clock out the buffer and very slight (often inaudible) differences can occur due to different DAC designs/specifications/quality, such as immunity to clock jitter. Things like filters, over sampling, one bit sampling, and multi-bit sampling are all methods to achieve the most accurate conversion and all have advantages/disadvantages and can cause slight differences in the ANALOG output. These differences occur in the DAC after the buffer data from the transport.
The quality of the transport itself should not normally make a difference in the quality of the output provided it is capable of properly reading the bits from the CD. It would require a very bad transport design or a very badly damaged disk in order for the system to fail to get all the correct words off a CD disk under normal conditions.
After error correction the result is two channels of 65536 bit word data streams at 44.1 KHz or a data stream rate of 1411200 bits/sec.
There is not much rocket science to this and, as it is all digital, the data will either be correct or incorrect. Incorrect words will cause skipping of the sound as their remains a gap or blank in the data stream.
The relative difference in transports therefore will be related to how easily it skips and how robustly it reads all the words from say a scratched or damaged disk.
The output bitstream from one transport to another should therefore be the same provided there are no skips.
It is downstream of the transport itself where differences can occur. The DAC conversion requires an accurate clock speed to clock out the buffer and very slight (often inaudible) differences can occur due to different DAC designs/specifications/quality, such as immunity to clock jitter. Things like filters, over sampling, one bit sampling, and multi-bit sampling are all methods to achieve the most accurate conversion and all have advantages/disadvantages and can cause slight differences in the ANALOG output. These differences occur in the DAC after the buffer data from the transport.
The quality of the transport itself should not normally make a difference in the quality of the output provided it is capable of properly reading the bits from the CD. It would require a very bad transport design or a very badly damaged disk in order for the system to fail to get all the correct words off a CD disk under normal conditions.