Jay’s Audio CD Transport

I have the CD3 Mk3 in black and the finish is first rate. I would describe the color as a deep navy blue, almost black. I have other black components that are more of a charcoal black. As mentioned above, the drawer is a pleasure to use and the fit and finish are excellent.

I also have a Teac VRDS 701T transport and I'll take this opportunity to give a brief review of both. I'm running two DACs - a Berkeley Alpha Reference MK II MQA and an Audio Mirror Tubadour IV.

The CD3 has several outputs including I2S which is a nice feature. I have it hooked up to my Berkeley with the AES output and I use the I2S output for the Tubadour. The Teac only has a Coax output so it is more limited if you are running more than one DAC.

The CD3 upsamples 4X (176) which allows your DAC to use a better filter. I run it at the upsampled rate all the time. If you don't use oversampling the CD3 uses dither which obscures the first bit of resolution. This would be fine except that it won't decode an HDCD. I collect HDCDs (I have over 100) and this format is one of the main reasons I bought the Berkeley.

The TEAC will pass the full 16 bit signal at no oversampling so it will allow the Berkelty DAC to decode HDCDs. It will also handle MQA CDs which the Berkeley will also decode. I've bought about a dozen MQA CDs and in some cases they are clearly better than their standard counterparts and in other cases I can't hear much of a difference.

Both transports are a pleasure to use and I expect them to last forever. Replacement drives are available for both but I doubt I'll ever need one. Regarding sound quality, I wish I could say that one is clearly better than the other but I doubt I could tell them apart in a blind test. My digital rig has made it to the endgame stage and everytime I play a well recorded CD I marvel at the sound.

The two DACs have more of an identifyable character than the transports. They are very close and one does not sound clearly better than the other but they are a little different. If I had to only have only one I would keep the Berkeley but I like having both to mess around with.

I bought the CD3 to replace a PSA PerfectWave transport which was a piece of junk. They used the cheapest $15 computer grade drive they could find in a $4000 transport! It felt cheap and I stressed out every time I used it because I was afraid it wouldn't work. I went through 3 drives until PSA wouldn't support the unit anymore. I mention this because the Jay's audio and the TEAC are magnitudes higher quality than the PSA unit for similar or less money.

@no_regrets 

The color difference is very subtle - essentially it is black. You have to see it in bright light to notice any difference in shade. I probably shouldn't have mentioned it but I did in case you are completely OCD about the color of your components. It's not something most people would notice.

Regarding sound differences, you should know that I'm one of those guys who can't hear any difference in interconnects. I'm sure that some people hear large differences between two CD transports but I'm not one of them. I've compared the two transports through the same DAC on multiple occasions and if there is a difference it's not significant to me.

As I mentioned earlier, I have put together my endgame digital rig and there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to buy the CD3 instead of the CD2. I wanted to be comfortable that I had bought the best sanely priced transport I could find. If I had bought the CD2 I didn't want to always wonder if I would have been happier with the CD3. I have over 4000 CDs and I'm committed to the format.  I'm pretty sure it's the last transport I will ever buy (along with the 701T). The Jay's is so nicely made and works so smoothly that it's a pleasure to use. That's a very important factor to me.

Good question regarding the LTA DAC. It's a NOS Ladder DAC which does not use a filter so I would think that oversampling wouldn't make any difference. If you decide to get the CD3 it will be interesting to try it to see if oversampling makes any sonic difference.