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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 1 response by richdirector

richdirector's avatar
richdirector
269 posts
 

I would have thought dac in the past. My vinyl rig limited to a rega rp8 so I guess an alright medium quality rig going into vertere stage.

 

a few years back I bought a project rs2 transport which suddenly took CD to a level on par with my vinyl. I swapped my chord dac for matching rs2 dac connected by IS2 (hdmi) which allows dac to reclock the transport. 
 

straight away it was a no need to mess anymore. The dac also has ability to have valves in the chain but my Luxman class an amp and tannoy speakers bring enough lushness to the game not to bother. I think the cd player top end from marantz/luxman might be simpler but efficient alternatives.

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