CD players = dead?

I use my Oppo only for blu-rays. CD disks are for ripping and archive. It’s easier to get to really low jitter without the CD transport. If you must use a CD transport, at least reclock it:

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=154408.0

As you can see, the jitter is 35 times higher using only the transport. DACs are not jitter immune either. Even DACs with upsampling sound better with a low-jitter input signal.

Using the reclocker also eliminates ground-loops, upsamples the data and negates the need for CD treatments, green pens, destatic etc... Don’t waste your money on CD tweaks. Buy a reclocker instead. Much more effective and can give you 20psec of jitter, as good as a $20K+ transport.

Steve N.

Empirical Audio

I have been reading a lot of reviewers lately re-discovering CD playback after getting used to streaming DACs and they all say that they’re surprised at how much more solid the CD’s sound (depending on the quality of CD of course) so no, not dead. Here’s a tip- find an old Sony DVD like the DVP-S 7700 on ebay for less than $100 and you’ll be amazed at how good it sounds. Trust me.

I modded the S7700 for almost 10 years, so I’m very familiar with it. Only mediocre stock, but less than 1 nsec of jitter after my mods. I sold thousands of this popular mod and the mod actually cost more than the transport.

I don’t have the modded Sony anymore because it is not even in the same league as good computer playback from an Off-Ramp 5 or Interchange or reclocking any old transport with my Synchro-Mesh reclocker. These all have jitter in the 8-16psec range at the end of a 4 foot coax cable across 75 ohms. Almost an order of magnitude smaller, and it is clearly audible in the focus and imaging. Jitter is the ONLY thing that matters in a transport, period. There is no other magical fairy dust.

You should experience truly low jitter first. Very few audio companies have mastered truly low jitter in their designs. They often quote "intrinsic jitter" numbers, which are nothing more than the jitter specs on the oscillator. A far cry from the actual jitter you will get at the end of a coax cable across the 75 ohm terminator.

Here is a jitter plot of a typical transport before and after the Synchro-Mesh:

https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=154408.0

Here is a close-up of the jitter distribution and spectrum:

https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=157348.0

Steve N.

Empirical Audio