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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
charles1dad's avatar
charles1dad
10,229 posts
 
@ghdprentice, 

"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."

I appreciate your comments but that is simply conjecture and nothing more (Or less). At the rate things are going with continued improvement with Analogue turntables, CD transports and digital servers/streaming it’s anyone’s reasonable guess. It will be interesting and fun to see where these various audio front end sources take us.
Charles


musichead's avatar
musichead OP
94 posts
 
Thanks for the replies!
I am very happy with my Audio Mirror Tubadour III SE DAC and have no interest in making a change. It’s not inconvenient for me to put a CD on a tray and press play :-). I’m into vinyl and it’s worth all the effort for the musical experience.
I just want to maximize my current CD collection and an upgrade to my CD transport I am sure will provide improvements. I have modified my Cambridge Audio CXC and it brought improvements. The CXC is very good, it frames the musical picture very well and it presents the full spectrum of sound. I suspect a better transport will bring more body to the sound and better contrast. My TT setup is really good and that is my reference point, I assume I can narrow the gap between my TT and digital.
I don’t mind going the direction of a streamer as long it can deliver the same end result as a quality CD transport. What streamers should I look at? should I look at one that has an internal hard drive? or one that I can plug a hard drive into? I assume this is the way to store the files. I am not excited about ripping all my CDs but if the same result can be achieved with added network streaming like Spotify it might be worth it. The complication with digital is always noise, do streamers have issues because how they are designed? I see some have very serious power supplies to deal with noise.
charles1dad's avatar
charles1dad
10,229 posts
 
@musichead

@mahler123, In my opinion made a very good suggestion for you. The Melco N-100/E100, combo streamer/server/HD storage/CD ripper/transport. All this for 3000.00 USD. Seems like a very reasonable solution with flexibility and streaming convenience.

Or for 3000.00 you could go
the route of a very upper tier CD transport i.e.the Pro-Ject CD BOX RS2. No streaming/CD ripping or HD storage, but dedicated/committed specific task of reading CDs at a upper tier performance level. State of the art according to some familiar with it.

Either seems like money well spent depending on your preferred approach.
Charles
Post removed 
ghdprentice
6,358 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.
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