Does the Transport make a significant difference?

Douglas - I don't understand what Shadorne is wrong about -he says exactly same thing as you. Am I missing something?

Douglas - I asked since I have DAC1 with cheap DVD player and no way to compare. From what I found on the Benchmark forum DAC1's jitter bandwidth is in order of few Hz and rejection is reaching 100dB at frequencies of interest (kHz). I know that sidebands, in spite of being at about -80dB with 3nsp-p jitter (taken from Stereophile article), are very audible since not harmonically related to root frequency but 100dB rejection on the top of it should be enough. Some Benchmark users reported audible changes between common transports while the others could not detect any change at all. In addition they could not find the difference between toslink and coax (other than ground loops that Shadorne mentioned) where toslink should be much worse jitter wise. Benchmark claims that there is absolutely no difference as long as player is "bit transparent" and not all of them are. Some, for instance, have digital volume control or another form of processing. Benchmark also tried thousands of feet of cat5 cable to prove that cable induced jitter is rejected and confirmed that difference is not audible. I wonder how much of the claim is Benchmark's marketing and how much of the user observed difference with expensive transports is a placebo effect. Using DVD player is convenient since they are cheap, play other formats and have good tracking, but I'm always interested in improvement.

At the level of transparency of the Benchmark many people complain that it is too clean up to point of being sterile. My first impression after switching from Cambridge gear (not much experience with high end) was that instruments must be missing on recordings I know well. It takes a while to get used to it (in positive sense).

Also - John Siau mentioned on the Benchmark forum that DAC1 was designed to avoid being warm because warm sound (even harmonics) does nasty job on the piano sound with its complex harmonic structure (but great for voice or guitar) making it sound almost out of tune. He claims that the only way to get real piano sound is to use headphones because crossover does similar thing. I don't think I would be able to hear it anyway.

Shadorne - I was under impression that we discuss sonic differences of different transports with the same DAC and not comparing DAC with stand alone CDP. At least that was the purpose of the thread and my reply to Douglas statement below:

"In my article I point out that a jitter eliminating DAC (the Benchmark) can help raise the performance of the poor transport, but it will not make it the sonic equivalent of the finer transport. There are still fundamental sonic differences. The distinction between them becomes even more profound in higher end rigs, even if the same jitter nullifying DAC is used. "

same here - bad spelling and technical.