A/B test on Transports

Lsi9
Lsi9 Posts: 616
edited December 2006 in Electronics
Has anyone ever blind tested a single cd transport vs. a dvd player for instance?
Do you think you would be able to tell the difference? same equipment, same music...
I think I will do this soon....
Should there be a noticeable difference and would you be able to pick it out everytime?

Audio Physic Scorpio II
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MIT Shotgun S3
Bada HD-22 CDP
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  • pearsall001
    pearsall001 Posts: 5,094
    edited December 2006
    Lsi9 wrote:
    Has anyone ever blind tested a single cd transport vs. a dvd player for instance?
    Do you think you would be able to tell the difference? same equipment, same music...
    I think I will do this soon....
    Should there be a noticeable difference and would you be able to pick it out everytime?

    I'm in the process of doing just that myself. I recently purchased the Van Alstine Ultra DAC & Frank said that the transport used will not make any difference because of the way he designed his DAC. He states that jitter is corrected by the internal design of his DAC. I have a Consonance CD120 that is a superb CD player. The Ultra DAC simply elevated the music performance compared to the CD120 as a stand alone player. To get back on track, I was using the CD120 as the transport which fit the bill quite nicely. I also had an older HK DVD22 DVD/CD player laying around. So I decided to hook it up as a transport to see if I can tell the difference between it & the HK DVD22. I'm going on about 2 weeks now using the HK and switching back to the CD120. For the life of me I can't hear any difference. I guess Frank was correct in respect to his Ultra DAC taking care of the jitter problem. I'm going to give it some more time to really make a final decision. The way it sounds now there isn't any benefit to using the Consonance CD120 as a transport. If this is the case the Consonance CD120 will be up for sale on the forum shortly. Anybody interested?
    "2 Channel & 11.2 HT "Two Channel:Magnepan LRSSchiit Audio Freya S - SS preConsonance Ref 50 - Tube preParasound HALO A21+ 2 channel ampBluesound NODE 2i streameriFi NEO iDSD DAC Oppo BDP-93KEF KC62 sub Home Theater:Full blown 11.2 set up.
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  • Lsi9
    Lsi9 Posts: 616
    edited December 2006
    Whats does the DAC go for?
    To me this makes sense, a transport should be just that, a means of extracting
    the digital information from a cd, I always thought a DAC
    should be responsible for the main overall quality in sound...

    Audio Physic Scorpio II
    Pathos Logos
    MIT Shotgun S3
    Bada HD-22 CDP
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  • pearsall001
    pearsall001 Posts: 5,094
    edited December 2006
    Lsi9 wrote:
    Whats does the DAC go for?
    To me this makes sense, a transport should be just that, a means of extracting
    the digital information from a cd, I always thought a DAC
    should be responsible for the main overall quality in sound...

    It ain't cheap, but it's worth every penny as far as I'm concerned. This is a very interesting subject. On other forums this is discussed quite a bit. There are definetely two camps on this issue. Some guys swear there is a difference between transports, & others that say there is no audible difference. With my system & the gear that i'm running, I can honestly say that to me there is no difference in sound quality between the Consonance CD120 player & the HK DVD22 DVD/CD player both being used as transports. I'm sure there are guys here that will disagree, but I make all my decisions based on what I hear in my system.

    http://www.avahifi.com/root/equipment/dac/transcendence_dac.htm
    "2 Channel & 11.2 HT "Two Channel:Magnepan LRSSchiit Audio Freya S - SS preConsonance Ref 50 - Tube preParasound HALO A21+ 2 channel ampBluesound NODE 2i streameriFi NEO iDSD DAC Oppo BDP-93KEF KC62 sub Home Theater:Full blown 11.2 set up.
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  • steveinaz
    steveinaz Posts: 19,538
    edited December 2006
    I tried a Denon DVD-2910 against a CEC CD-3300 using a Benchmark DAC1. I found the CEC to do a better job for Redbook purposes, but kept the 2910 for movie duty. Differneces were subtle, but apparent enough to not sell off my CEC.
    Source: Bluesound Node 2i - Preamp/DAC: Benchmark DAC2 DX - Amp: Parasound Halo A21 - Speakers: MartinLogan Motion 60XTi - Shop Rig: Yamaha A-S501 Integrated - Shop Spkrs: Elac Debut 2.0 B5.2
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