If the DAC is the same, how different do CD transports sound?

@yage Thanks for watching and commenting thoughtfully. I am curious whether Mr. Lovegrove feels satisfied that a sufficiently high quality of transport (or player used as a transport) was represented in this listening trial. He went to a lot of trouble to do this experiment -- did he miss a chance to use the kinds of units people here are convinced make a difference? (In fairness, I am not sure if any here have done the kind of controlled listening test that Lovegrove did.)

@hilde45 I was thinking about this type of testing where there’s a group of people listening to different components, in this case, transports. 
In my opinion, I would not rely on this type of evaluation:

1. The evaluation is done by a group of people not thoroughly and intimately familiar with the system. 
2. It was a quick A/B type comparison. 
 

Reason why I would not rely on this - 

A listener needs time to evaluate a change brought by a component in a system they are familiar with. This takes hours, if not days, listening to one component then repeating the process with the old component back in its place. Asking a person to evaluate a change in the system they’re not familiar with is not doing anyone or the component any favors. The brain needs time to get a good baseline and in this case, that time isn’t allowed.
For this reason alone, the results of this evaluation are pure entertainment and cary very little, if any, real world value. You have a panel of listeners with too many variables they’re put up against to make a proper judgement call. 

This of course is just my opinion and how I see and treat these types of listening tests. This is also why a blind A/B is bull 💩. It’s too quick and too flawed in its set up and execution. 

It’s so funny, people like Jason Bourne who shout “blind tests” in your face, never do any blind tests for themselves! 😂🤔. Why? Because they believe everything sounds the same, thus nothing to prove to themselves or anyone else. 

Harley Lovegrove of Pearl Acoustics is known for designing speaker enclosures states that from his listening tests transports don’t matter.

Benjamin Zwickel who designs and builds highly regarded Mojo Audio DACs tells his customers that the quality of the transport either holds back or releases the capabilities of a DAC.

You decide

@jasonbourne71  how do you level match a transport?