What is purpose of a cd transport?


Some people say that a certain cd transport is "good." How can one cd transport be "better" than another?
Isn't their job just to hold/play the disc?
samuellaudio

Showing 3 responses by crudo20

Thanks for the info Shardorne. I've often had trouble finding something that makes logical sense in the audioworld... ;-) I've heard the argument that a transport reads a 1 or a 0 and the distance between them make the note (or is subject to error) - like an analogue record player. This is a digital medium, not an etched vinyl record. Wow and flutter shouldn't affect the digital signal to the DAC when it has correction data, right? It would be great to be located somewhere with enough equipment that I could just sit down and blind compare a discman (assuming it had digital out) and a krell transport to the same DAC.
Does the apple airport express provide a quick enough & accurate digital signal for DAC purposes?
Thanks for the link Shadorne. I think I'm going to go for that and then find a DAC to run it through. I keep reading about the death of CD and it seems that I'll be content with digital for convienience and analogue for quality. Now I just need to find a reasonable DAC - it seems that audio mirror da-1 isn't listed for sale anymore.