Lack of new CD Transports

Yeah, I've wondered about this for years. Why doesn't Rega sell an Apollo-R without a built-in dac?

 

does anyone has a Little Dot transport or a Shanling Tempo and can share how they are?
there are not many reviews on them. but on these few reviews, they are mentioned as
rather decent equipment.

the Project RS CD transport also looks promising but the Blue Tiger servo system is an unknown
without much literature to read on.

my current transport is a Philips ProII DIY kit. the body n electronics is a kit from Hifidiy, Hong Kong
and the ProII drive mechanism i got from encosystems, US. as i hv zero electronics skill, i paid a technician
to help me put the kit together. its working well, but times it will not read the next CD n the only way
to get it working is to do a power off n on. the technician who helped me asssembled the kit told me
Philips ProII lens are known to have a relative short life span, so i have to be prepared to either buy
a replacement drive or get another transport altogether. my daily 8-9 hours play time is helping it go
EOL sooner than later.... haha...

 

Indeed, there isn't much point to an expensive transport.

 

Having assembled CD players a few years ago, in between jobs, I would imagine that the reason there are so few self-made transports on the market, is that compared to the sonic gains, the financial investment would be extremely large.

20 years ago you could take a £20 transport, drop it into your own box, with own audio board and easily sell it for a very large profit. As has been noted elsewhere, the more small hi-fi companies manufacturer their own parts, even on a transport 25 times the cost of a budget, pre-assembled unit, the chances of reliability issues is greatly increased.

A machined from solid loading tray may look and feel far more substantial than a cheap plastic moulding, but how much of a sonic gain is there?

I questioned a company rep, whose top end CD players had quality, original design and build transports, why they were using cheap feeling mechanisms, on a product that still cost a few thousand pounds. The answer? Because we can make it sound much better by using that cost saving, elsewhere in the design. This was from a company that also manufacturered, a reference CD player, costing £12,000.

The research budget for this CD player was over a £1,000,000, I believe that less than 1,500 were sold. This was the CD reference player for most of the hi-fi magazines around the world!

Their network music player, sounds better.

I should imagine that somewhere above are the reasons manufacturers don't make their own transport. Specialist hi-fi sells in hundreds, sometimes less than a hundred - very rarely thousands, or multiple thousands units.

 

haha...a friend who heard i went ahead with the ProII transport laughed at said
what a waste of $$, everyone is going server you know.........
but for an old school guy n an old man, plunking a CD into a transport (with a good matching DAC)
n just press the play button to get a sound that massage my heart strings.... its worth the trouble n $$ spent

 

CD-ROM computer drives topped out about 52x in 2002 for $25, now that same money gets you a Plextor 48X CD-ROM - plus 24x DVD+R writing.

Although the latter drives have CD-Audio compromises to play all formats, they would work just fine in a SATA-based CD audio standalone player as "transport", and in fact the manufacturer could implement high-speed read and security re-reads, local flash caching if not complete disc ripping, and internet accurate-read database (and title) lookup, to give guaranteed better audio than a standard player (which otherwise might fall back to C1 and C2 error correction). Demand you make the DAC decision yourself with only SPDIF (or additionally "clear" HDMI) output. All while allowing you to hot-swap the "transport" with another computer drive for another $25, yourself, should it fail.

But then again, this would be a niche, especially when droves are dumping their optical; might as well add that cd ripping function to a audio server appliance or a subscription streamer.

 

No, not at all like turntables!

 

The Pioneer slot CD drives seemed very well designed, some others occasionally had a tendency to lightly scratch a CD - ask any Apple user! I'm sure a good design should overcome this, but how do you play your 8cm CD singles?

 

Optical Storage | StreamUnlimited

The Blue Tiger was developed by ex-Phillips employees at StreamUnlimited in Vienna

 

Far better value is Sony UBP-X800

 

Because it wouldn't have the Rega "sound"?

 

The advantage of WAVs, FlACS (and AIFFS!), ripped from the best sounding CD version and giving an AccurateRip, ie not a single frame of error, can be demonstrated and heard in a few seconds. The real question is, can any CD player, ever be as good as a lossless file?

 

Cyrus make an excellent CDt.

 

For me playing a CD on a good CD player is still preferable than playing the ripped file of that CD.I've had this debate of previous threads as to maybe why.

 

wow... Tks for the info. so looks like a good one then.
ok, now to gather funds to standby for a new transport in the even the current one decides to give up its ghost -





likely a choice between these two, both about the same $$ to get

 

yes, whether its a good CD player or when one get a transport / DAC that comes together well.... one is in Sonic Heaven.... haha....

i had a Audio Note DAC One 1x Signature before to go with the ProII transport, but i found the sound too "aggresive" for my liking. when i swapped the DAC for a LKS MHDA-003, the sound just fall in place and i have not look back since.

 

I'm firstly delighted you enjoy playing CDs, listening to and enjoying music is after all what our hobby is (mostly!) about.

I'm not sure if this thread is the right one to discuss the benefits of playing a CD or ripping, but certainly goes some way to explaining why "there is a lack of new CD transports". I will read your posts in the other thread, because I believe it would take an extremely good, and by necessity, costly CD transport, looking to overcome many issues, to approach the quality of an error free lossless rip.

I'm certainly not saying that this is not possible, some of these transports look gorgeous, and would be very desirable for a small number of people. Unfortunately, they do not come cheap, and the numbers sold would probably fall a long way short of four digits. That fact is also why manufacturers aren't falling over themselves to design and manufacture a niche product, for a declining market. It is great that some are rising to the challenge.

 

I personally would not bother going down the stand alone transport /dac combo..I'm quite happy with my 30 year old Philips CD player.

 

i was down this same route... since 2004 when i restarted going into setting up a sound system, i bought a NAD C542 and it was my one and only CD player for many years. i listened to Marantz, Rotel, Denon, Phlilips CD players but still found myself going back and liking the NAD C542 which i found has speed and pace that no other CD players in the range can match. that was till middle of last year when a friend suggested i tried going separates, transport/DAC. i read a lot into the subject the decided to go for the "best" in the game, a Phliips Pro II transport. but finding such a transport in the local used market prove to be more difficult than expected, which led me to going to a DIY unit.

a transport has moving parts, gears, belt, etc and a lens which has a life span, so its quite likely it will be change in due time. a DAC however can last quite some time as there is little stress on the equipment. the beauty of a 2 box system is you can mix and match till your heart's contend. but if not well done, can also be a thorn ... so in this i considered myself that i found my sound just after 2 DACs.... haha...

 

Good point about DAC's potentially lasting longer than transports.But my DAC's of choice are the philips TDA-1541 /1543 .For me they have a lovely analogue type sound..There are always plenty of second hand machines on ebay from various manufacturers with those dac's fitted for around £30-£60.So if my player gives up the ghost i can easily and cheaply replace with another.

 

incidentally, my very first DAC as a tryout going separates was an entry level Project DAC Box S FL and the main engine inside is 4 x TDA 1543s on piggy bag arrangement
and yes, its a very analogue and sweet sound. a friend helped me build a Linear Power Supply for it which brought the performance of the DAC to a new level. and there is some magic about non sampling DACs, at least for me. even now the current DAC has setting to run as close to a non sampling mode.

also the running of 2 boxes, transport / DAC with separate circuitry and power supply helps to give a better sound.

 

CD players are so good the last few years that separates aren't really needed. Most new, quality CD players have multiple inputs including USB, what else does one need.

 

Maybe in the old days but the link between the two components is the weak point, and if power supplies and circuitry isn't closely matched there becomes more compromises than advantages.

 

for "consistency", i used the same make of ICs linking the transport to the DAC, DAC to preamp and preamp to power amp.
ICs called Black Widow by a local Hifi hobbyist who hand made them under trade name, Acoustic Synergy.
my only request is for him to terminate them with Neutrik Profi plugs and nothing else.
they make very secure connections to the RCA in and out terminals of the various equipment.
so far tis move seems to be a good for my ears...

 

This should be good, made in Brooklyn

Woo Audio Top Loading CD Transport-Audio Advisor