I had a 35 year old Sony professional CDP and it sounded great, even better than my 0ppo. But unfortunately it died and being 35, no one would work on it, so I figured that with streaming becoming a bigger part of my life, I would cheap out and I bought an Audiolab 6000CDT and haven’t looked back. It gets used at least twice a week and except for being a slot loader, I like it a lot.
Accessible, yet elite sounding, musical CD machines. Current vs next upgrade
I’d like to start a thread of musical, all out CD transports and players, in leu of the physical media’s resurrection in the hifi world.
I use a TEAC PD-507T. For its external clock input and tried-and-true drive mechanism and chassis engineering. This CD drive mech. is arguably one of the best designs in the industry, which is why you see so many high end transports with TEAC trays. But the 507t lacks tubes and i2s input….
I’ve been drooling over the Triode TRV-CD6se. For its magnificent 6922 preamp tubes in a tube buffer output stage, AND IT HAS i2s!!!
Now the tube buffer won’t be included in the i2s output path, you have to choose either the tube output through the Burr-Brown chips, or a digital transport over i2s, but how cool!? What is everyone using currently and what’s in your upgrade chamber ?
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@richardbrand my apologies. When used like this, native HDMI, as with USB, the DAC buffers and reclocks the data, avoiding the possible jitter issues of I2S. |
@zx10 not quite, just 8 x the sampling rate. SACD is DSD 64, DSD 512 exists. DSD 1024 can be found at Native DSD Music - but has just been up sampled from a lower res master. When I buy high res stuff from HighDefTapeTransfers I look to see the provenance - source, mastering etc. and choose my high res format appropriately. I have found the DXD 352.8 24 bit can sound better than high res DSD. They appear often to convert the tape to DXD and master at that. |
@jbuddha882 a few months ago I sold a Playback Designs MPD-8 DAC and MPs-X streamer , for a few reasons but mainly after realizing I really loved playing local CDs and was more or less fed up with the inconsistencies of a streaming only setup. That’s another conversation, so to keep this short I rounded out my Accuphase stack by purchasing a DP-770 SACD machine. This beast is 65 pounds and has an incredible transport design/ all custom in house by Accuphase. It’s like a Swiss watch in precision and a tank in terms of mass. The sonic performance has knocked me out- I can find no fault with it. I owned the MPD-8 for a year and know that amazing DAC well. The DP-770 offers at least as much sheer resolution and performance - and makes playing CDs and SACDs an absolute joy. The voltage drive is a perfect match for the gain structure of the C-2900 preamp. The MPD-8 has a hot output and can be reduced with menu options. For streaming sessions I use a Lumin U2 and love it. I can’t say enough about the DP-770. If you are hunting for a top SACD player with a USB input id put it on your radar. |
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