Jays audio makes some very good models
Looking To Upgrade to a new CD Transport
I currently own a Cary 306/200 cd player which I have had for 15 years. For the last 5 years have been using the Cary as a transport only with a stand alone DAC, which were the Chord Qutest and then the Weiss 204. The retail cost of the Cary CD player was about $5000.00. It is a well built machine. My question is have the transports been improved over the last 15 years. I stream often, but I still listen to cd's. Would purchasing a new transport improve my sound. My maximum budget is $5000.00 new only. Is a move that I am contemplating, a move sideways or would a new transport make a discernable difference in sound improvement. Thank you.
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- 46 posts total
I heard the previous model to this model and it was the best CD player I have ever heard. This has a DAC. Might be interesting to have something that sounds a bit different than you current DAC as you could compare.
https://www.stereophile.com/content/hegel-music-systems-viking-cd-player-page-2
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I have a Jay's Audio CD3 MK III and a Teac 701T transport. Here is my take on both. Even though I stream using Qobuz I still mostly play CDs and vinyl. I play at least 10 CDs a week and I got mad when $4000 transport made by a guy named Paul had the mechanism fail 3 times in 3 years and they would no longer service the unit. Turns out that this transport used a $15 generic computer CD drive that was never designed to spin discs for hours. Not going to make that mistake again. Jay's CD3 MK III - This piece is built extremely well and is very heavy. It just feels like quality. It uses the last iteration of the Phillips mechanism and Jay's says they have a lifetime stock of them in case one ever fails. It has a feature that allows it to upsample to 176 kHz which can sound better on some DACs. The downside is that it dithers the first bit which prevents a DAC from decoding HDCDs. Since I have several hundred of these, that was an issue. Teac 701T - I got this transport because Teac makes their own high quality disc drive and this player will do HDCD just fine as well as play MQA CDs (My Berkeley DAC does both HDCD and MQA). This is an excellent transport, especially for the money. If I had to keep one of these units I would keep the Teac because of the flexibility. I have compared them to each other and I can't hear a difference. Frankly, the Jay's Audio is an issue of pride of ownership. I just love this piece and I smile every time I use it. I'm lucky to have both. |
I've had the Jays Audio CDT2 MK3 for a year and a half. It sounds great, i2s into a Denefrips Athena. I even got a spare CD unit just in case. However, recently i'm having problems with (it seems) the remote. Putting in new batteries did't change anything, but what is going on is that the player doesn't respond to the remote, but if you turn the player off and then back on, it does, but then only if you are standing right in front of it. After a while it stops responding again unless you are a couple feet in front of it. and do the power off thing. Then it stops again! This sort of limits the utility of the player, obviously. I haven't contacted the dealer about getting a new remote or yet tried getting a programmable one. Anyone have an idea about what to do with this situation?
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- 46 posts total