@no_regrets I think your questions on the transport were essentially answered in your 2 transport threads. That said, a quality DAC requires a transport that is on par quality wise otherwise you will not get the full SQ that the DAC can deliver. And, you need to understand which of the transport’s outputs has been optimized to also get more out of it. The improvements in SQ in both respects are very apparent and "worth" it. Ultimately only you can determine by listening for yourself which DAC suits your listening tastes. There are plenty of quality DACs but they don’t all sound the same, and/or have their own tradeoffs. Net net only you can decide which avoids the issues you described
Dedicated CD Transport vs DAC
Greetings,
Just some honest questions...
In your opinion, based on what you have actually experienced....
1) Which accounts for the most sonic improvement? A quality dedicated CD Transport or a Quality DAC?
2) If a person could assign a percentage... by what % did your cd transport improve your sound? By what % did your new dac improve your sound?
3) If you honestly gained an improvement in sound... was it like, " Oh my God, I can't believe how great this improvement is " or is it more like, " I can hear an improvement but no wheres nearly commensurate with the increase in price it cost me."
Coming from being highly invested in vinyl playback for the last 50 years... I'm struggling trying to decide how to improve the cd playback side of my system.
Up to this point in time, I've usually found cd playback to oftentimes sound hard, glaring, sterile, two dimensional, etc.
Which in your mind, helps to eliminate the above sound qualities that I dislike? A new dedicated cd transport or a new dac?
Thanks much for taking the time to reply and help me better understand!
Best wishes,
Don
Showing 3 responses by facten
@glennewdick No question that the DAC is more important however if you have had a decent transport and then swapped in a better transport the impact is quite noticeable and shouldn’t be discounted |
@no_regrets - I can'y give you the whys and wherefores as to why transports may have optimized outputs but for instance my SimAudio 260DT is optimized for AES/EBU. I got that 1st hand from SimAudio. I also read that for instance the top of the line Project is as well; certainly there are others. I don't see how any transport that has multiple outputs limits their market by optimizing one; the rest aren't poor sounding just not optimal. If anything the LTA Aero potentially doesn't allow users to match it with the best capabilities of a transport because of its limited inputs. |