USB CD Transports

Thanks michaelmshaw, your comments are useful, look forward to hearing more.

I continue to be amazed when posters ask about a transport or a CDP and then gets told by the usual half dozen suspects that they should be playing ripped CDs.

Not helpful, and as our current OP amply demonstrates, at this point in time most people have familiarity with ripping CDs and streaming, but are still interested in disc replay and are not looking for a lecture on why they should not be.

  So having gotten that off my chest, no I haven’t heard the new Schiit, but I am also interested in acquiring a new transport.  I currently use a Oppo 105 as a transport into my DAC .  I have experimented with using my Melco Optical ripper as a transport, and recently tried the Project Transport, which I didn’t like and returned.    The Melco sounds slightly different than the Oppo but I wouldn’t say itI am starting to believe that to really experience and improvement I may need to go into the $5K and up range, and before I do that I would like to hear the Schiit.  So any feedback would be appreciated 

I continue to be amazed when posters ask about a transport or a CDP and then gets told by the usual half dozen suspects that they should be playing ripped CDs.

Agree. There are good reasons one might want to rip CDs. I have a DAC dongle that I use with my phone, IEMs, and my music files stored on a 1 tb microSD, and I also enjoy playing FLAC files from my PC through a DAC to my headphones or loudspeakers. But there are compelling reasons to play CDs--one of which is that one might enjoy doing so. Many times I like to actually load a Redbook CD and play it. Same with vinyl on my turntable(s). There's something to be said for the rituals we establish for ourselves, and there is much mindfulness to be found in the cleaning of vinyl, the alignment of a cartridge, or even the green painting of the edge of a CD if that brings pleasure to the listening experience.

The Shanling ET3 is burning in nicely and it is pleasantly surprising, both in build quality and in the music it retrieves. This may turn out to be higher value for money than I thought when I made the purchase.

@mahler123 …”I continue to be amazed when posters ask about a transport or a CDP and then gets told by the usual half dozen suspects that they should be playing ripped CDs.”.

Or… when an OP asks a question about older technology some folks try to be helpful and point out options they may not be aware of.

As someone that has introduced new technology to users who seldom have a broad understanding of the state of technology for decades. I always try to make sure to look at the broader picture. Typically it can be really helpful to point it out contemporary alternatives. They can easily ignore the advice, after all it is free.

A recent example was a user was printing out hundreds of invoices each day. They then would take this huge pile to a scanner and scan them one by one into files, which would be emailed to her workstation, where she would retrieve them one by one, find the customers email and forward the scanned document to the customer. She wanted to know if I could batch the printing… so she did not have to print them one by one.

I could have answered the question. Instead I pointed to the menu item below print document that said email to customer. Suddenly, no printing, no scanning, no matching emails to the customers address. One very happy user.

It’s the assumption often wrongly made that the user is not aware of other technologies, and the bias about CD or LP not being as worthy...often resulting in a very direct question, by a knowledgeable OP, getting derailed to suit someone else's purpose...