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A "bit" of information

Besides word clock jitter, which some DACs are capable of almost eliminating (Benchmark DAC-1), what other things can make one transport sound different from another? Aren't they just machines that spit out a stream of ones and zeros? Is it all just cosmetics for more money?

Thanks
koestner
koestner OP
625 posts
 
Thank you all for your responses. I was trying to convince myself that I didn't need a new transport. I've been told my Sony DVP S900es is not good as a transport.
kana813
956 posts
 
"This is why computer audio is intrinsically better than CD playback. The pits are jittery as written on the disk. The Transport also adds jitter when it reads these pits, because each read head has different accuracy of reading the pits."

And the cheap CD drives in PCs don't add jitter when they
read the data on to the HD, and the noisy PC PSU doesn't effect the output signal?
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
"And the cheap CD drives in PCs don't add jitter when they
read the data on to the HD, and the noisy PC PSU doesn't effect the output signal?"

No. I'm talking about ripping the CD and playing it back from RAM on the computer. This is computer-driven audio. The CDROM drive is not involved in the payback. As for the noisy power supply and noisy ground, there are converters that go from USB to S/PDIF that have their own power supply or even a battery supply and they even isolate the computer and audio system grounds, so no noise of any kind gets injected from the PC. The USB interface does not affect the sound quality, no matter what the length.

This truly is the highest quality method for playback of CD images.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Manufacturer/Modder
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