I now have a computer based system that blew away my Gryphon Mikado Signature by a very wide margin and is now my sole means of music listening. My PC is a very bespoke beast that sports every jitter busting device that I could get my hands on. It is not for the faint hearted as there is a lot of pounds sterling in it but very good clean and detailled it is too. The most important things I added were a Linear power supply, a J Cat Femto USB card lots of high quallity wire inside and out and a full compliment of Anti Jitter software from Laufer Technic. I have on a few occasions invited friends over to listen to it and saw them visibly pale when it first played something. Very satisfying that is as in some cases it was a third the price of what my friends had for CD Players.
Is a CD Transport the Best Digital Source?
So I’ve gone back and forth between CD players/transports, Blu-Ray/DVD players, computers, phones, and more for my digital source, but I always seem to end up going back to CD for the best sound I can get out of my system. I find that I enjoy mixing it up and enjoy the sound of each source, but when it comes down to what is the absolute best in my system, I just keep going back to a CD player or CD transport.
For awhile I though my laptop streaming digital to a DAC was my best source until I went back to a CD transport and realized that everything was “crisper,” especially the bass. The bass and midbass seem like they are more in unison, hit harder and hit quicker (less mush).
Does anyone find this to be the case and why is this? Is it just an economics problem, e.g. dollar for dollar a dedicated CD player has more of its costs sunk into music playing compared to a computer which is also built for running an OS, playing video, etc.?
Bonus question: Why does bass get better with better gear? It seems to me that bass would be the easiest to reproduce for a DAC. It’s this big, slow wave that is massively oversampled for what is needed. I would think any improvements would be up in the treble where you are near the Nyquist frequency and have to deal with phase-effects of low pass filters, etc.
For awhile I though my laptop streaming digital to a DAC was my best source until I went back to a CD transport and realized that everything was “crisper,” especially the bass. The bass and midbass seem like they are more in unison, hit harder and hit quicker (less mush).
Does anyone find this to be the case and why is this? Is it just an economics problem, e.g. dollar for dollar a dedicated CD player has more of its costs sunk into music playing compared to a computer which is also built for running an OS, playing video, etc.?
Bonus question: Why does bass get better with better gear? It seems to me that bass would be the easiest to reproduce for a DAC. It’s this big, slow wave that is massively oversampled for what is needed. I would think any improvements would be up in the treble where you are near the Nyquist frequency and have to deal with phase-effects of low pass filters, etc.