How important are transports?

Here's what I know: the $30 CD Drive in my computer can read most CDs (except those that are heavily scratched) PERFECTLY (tested via checksums during the ripping process) at speeds up to 52x normal playback speed. If you don't think your audio-quality CD drive can read CDs at 1x playback speed, or some ridiculous liquid you apply to the surface of the CD will somehow make these perfectly read bits sound better, I've got some swamp land in Florida you should definitely think about investing in. :)

It is all about the DAC.

I can not disagree more with Scrith's comments. My findings are that the transport is at least as important as the DAC. It's not about the ones and zeroes, it's about the timing of the ones and zeroes. This is jitter. I updated from a Theta Data Basic to a Basic II and the difference was outstanding. Half a dozen other transports have fed my DAC (Theta Gen Va Balanced) over the past few years and no two have sounded the same. Disclaimer: I bought land, and live, in Florida. So what do I know?

Years ago I was auditioning speakers in my home, the dealer offered a Meridan 200 transport, I already had the meridian 263 dac driven by a Rotel 845 (i think ) The transport made a bigger difference than the speakers! I ended up buying the transport instead of speakers and still have it! FWIW.

I wonder if the difference in sounds with different transports is sometimes related to how the particular transport is polluting the incoming 120v line? I do get a better sound from my system with a JPS labs digital cable connected to the cd player I'm using as a transport (Arcam alpha 10 cd, MF Tri-Vista 21).
Maybe not, but if somebody wanted to explore the notion, there is some info on audio asylum about the JPS labs being just a basic cable with a simple r/c network in one of the plug casings, and I believe you can buy it from the original manufacturer for less than $50.00 US.
Motors and digital devices are inheritantly nasty polluters.

Scrith,

I didn't say that timing was not important or the total problem. I said as long as the one's and zero's are there. In the case of reclocking the signal it gets more complicated than that. There is a reason we use stratum clocks in the tellecommunications industry at both ends of the signal.

So I will say it again, as long as the one's and zero's are there. Then you get into the checksum software you used to varify the correct reading of the bits. Did it read the bit length?

The transport and the cable can and do make a big difference.