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If the DAC is the same, how different do CD transports sound?

One interesting topic of discussion here is how audible the differences are between CD players when they are used as transports only — or when they are only transports to begin with.

In other words, in a comparison which keeps the DAC the same, how much difference can be heard between CD transports?

This recent video by Harley Lovegrove of Pearl Acoustics provides one test of this question. It may not be the ultimate test, but he does describe the experimental conditions and informations about the qualifications of the listeners.

He comes to the main conclusion here: https://youtu.be/TAOLGsS27R0?t=1079

The whole video is worth watching, I think.

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Showing 2 responses by larryi

larryi
3,743 posts
 

The transport has to recognize errors or ambiguous data, reread those problem areas, correct errors, or if necessary, interpolate and fill in gaps with an educated guess; all of this on the fly.  There is an advantage to ripping the CD on a quality ripper.  The ripper has the luxury of being able to reread a problem area over and over to confirm a particular stream of bits.  The stream of bits out of storage does not have to go through on the fly correction, which might give streaming of ripped CDs an advantage.

larryi
3,743 posts
 

Mapman,

I agree with you about ripping and streaming.  I utilize a Naim UnitiCore to rip and store my CDs as WAV files (it has a built in 8tb hard drive).  Of my 5,000 CDs, only four could not be ripped because the CDs also had video content.  Like you, I have noticed that some CDs take MUCH longer to rip because they have parts that have to be read over and over for error correction.  The ripper reports the number of errors that required interpolation to fill in error gaps.  Of these 5,000 CDs, the ripper has found zero errors requiring such measures.

The ability to search for any CD by knowing the tiniest bit of information, or browsing the collection by genre is priceless, particularly with a large collection.  The convenience of not having to search for each CD and then having to re-file them when done is also great.  The fun of assembling long playlists is also not to be overlooked.

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