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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

 

no_regrets

Showing 3 responses by oddiofyl

oddiofyl's avatar
oddiofyl
4,066 posts
 

DAC , absolutely but I just added a Teac VRDS 701T and it is much better sounding as the OPPO 103 I was using.   No comparison.    The OPPO sounded small and closed in , the Teac sounds huge with tons of detail.    Not subtle.  

oddiofyl's avatar
oddiofyl
4,066 posts
 

Don,

I had a Mutec MC3+USB reclocker / master clock that I bought for my Aurender's USB out.   That device can accept and distribute 10m and word clock .   The Mutec 10m ref clock is $$$ so I thought for now I would try the LHY OCK-2  by Jay's Audio.  It's really well built and can output sine or square wave at 50 or 75 Ohms so it's pretty flexible.   

The Teac clock is 50 Ohm sine wave but the 701t can accept either.   I've been super busy so I haven't done as much listening as I hoped but so far I think I prefer the square wave, there is a difference.    

oddiofyl's avatar
oddiofyl
4,066 posts
 

Judging by the quality of Jays subsidiary LHY  Network switch and OCK 2 clock I would say the Jays is a safe bet.   Those two products are built like a tank.  Fully CNC billet case.   Really high quality connectors.  Definitely changed my mind about what some of these Chinese brands are capable of.  

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