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Upsampling/Advice on Transport

After reading Sam Tellig's piece in the Feb. stereophile, I've decided that I want to take the plunge into upsampling via the MSB Link DAC. Unfortunately, my current CD player (Sonic Frontiers SFCD-1) doesn't have digital outputs, and so I will need to get a transport. His article implies that the quality of the transport is virtually irrelevant (he even used a Radio Shack portable and got the same results), because part of his suggested system is a Monarchy Audio Digital Interface Processor, which acts as a jitter reducer. So here is my question: in order to get the best sound, do I need to spring for an expensive transport, or will any consumer-grade CD player with digital outputs do the trick. Opinions?
miguelk
underwoodwally
66 posts
 
Go with a Pioneer DVD player. I heard a cheap Pioneer 333 at the CES show run into a Perpetual Technologies P1A (upsampler-dsp based interpolation unit) run this way and it was great. By the way the DSP bases interpolation the the rerason units like the DCS and Perpetual Technologies sound so good. It is not the upsampling. Upsampling is very similar to oversampling in its effect and is probably only 10-20 % of the total difference that these units make on the sound quality. DCS, Meridian and Perpetual Technologies use their own DSP based computer code to take 16 bit words and output 24 bit words. This is the reason they sound so good. NOT the 44.1k to 96k upsampling.
ie
38 posts
 
Sonic Frontiers use to add a digital output to that player when asked to do so...why not email them and find out about price and availability??
danvetc
527 posts
 
Miguelk, I use a Pioneer DV 525 ($250) with a Bel Canto DAC1. I think it works well as a transport although it is not programmable and the tray reminds me of the flimsy trays on my Micromega cd players in the past. Also, if some new thang comes out we all just have to have, you at least can use it for movies. [:)] Good luck, Charlie.
vongwinner
26 posts
 
I use a Nakamichi mb 10s and a MSB link III with the upsampling option and the combination works great! I believe that the trans port makes no significant difference so I went with a good 5 disc changer for the convenience and then the MSB sound is amazing! Total I have spent 700.00! In my opinion go for a good quality disk changer marantz or ect.. and the msb you cant go wrong!! Jim
mattman
61 posts
 
Marantz makes some inexpensive cd players with digital outputs. There used to be a lot of used/demo stuff on ebay. I bought a demo CC-67 for $168 a couple of months ago. It works fine as a transport.
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