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Reference Transports: An overall perspective

Teajay did a great job by starting a threat called "Reference DACS: An overall perspective."
I thought it might be beneficial to start a similar thread on transports.
Unfortunately I really have nothing much to say; I just hoped to get the ball rolling.

I'll start by throwing out a few names and a question:

Zanden 2000
CEC TL-0X
Metronome Kalista; T2-i Signature; and T2-A
Esoteric P-01; and P-03(?)
EMM Labs CDSD
47Labs PiTracer
Weiss Jason
Accustic Arts Drive 1
Ensemble Dirondo
Wadia 270se

I know that there are very few companies that actually make the drives themselves. The few I know about are:
Philips
TEAC
Sanyo/CEC

Do the various Philips drives or the TEAC VRDS transport mechanism each have a particular sonic signature regardless of which maunufacturer uses them in their designs?
exlibris

Showing 3 responses by teajay

teajay
1,721 posts
 
I have had in my rig the following transports: 1) CEC-TL1 It sounded wonderfully smooth with great liquidity but lacked dynamics and deep bass. 2) ML-31.5 Very detailed, dynamic, great bass, and was very smooth but not warm sounding like the CEC transport. 3) Ensemble Dirondo Offers very good details/dynamics with a smooth/easy over all sonic signature. It also offers an interesting feature that it will upsample to 24/96 the bit stream before it gets to the DAC, which sometimes will improve the sonics of the DAC, even if the DAC is an upsampling design.
So, I'm convinced that transports do have sonic signatures, and that belt driven transports have a different signature, I also have heard extensively the CEC TL-0, then the non belt transports.
teajay
1,721 posts
 
Ubglub, the company that built the 31.5 transport was Mark Levinson, as far as I can tell they no longer offer this piece. The production of this reference and highly regarded transport ended about five years ago. It sold for $10000.00 new and be gotten for around $3500.00 to $4300.00 on the used market. Built like a Rolls Royce it still would hold its own with current reference transports regarding performance/sonics.
teajay
1,721 posts
 
Pardales, I think you might be surprized how much of a sonic improvement you would hear with a reference level transport compared with a hard-drive.

I'm no engineer so I don't know why a reference transport would perform better then a hard-drive or an average transport, but every time I have gone to a better transport, right now my reference is the new Accustic Arts Drive1-MK2, the sonics get better, not just different, but a true improvement.
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