[jacal01]

What's a real transport?

 
PS Audio PerfectWave with LVDS I2S output.
 

  So until I make a transport, it is really tough to make a claim to a solution of the USB/AOIP cesspool problem.

 
I would snag up all the NOS industrial juke box Philips CD Pro2 transport drives as might still be available while you can.

 

[belgiangenius]

  when something is a bother compared to the alternative, people usually don't find a reason to stick to it. it was true for vinyls, it is true for CD. no technical reason would make me give up on playlists and the comfort of having everything a finger away anywhere I am.
I bet most people who still favor CDs over online downloads do it because they like to own something tangible, not for some fancy technical reasons.

I buy CDs because they are not compressed, whereas most digital downloads are so I don't want them.

 

[jacal01]

Cleanest recorded sessions I find are the ones where itinerant musical groups would come into a radio station recording studio and play live music selections to the morning traffic.  The best of these straightforward recordings would then be compiled and released by the station once a year for a favorite area charity drive, such as a food bank.

 

[artur9]

Three unrelated questions:
 
How about a "transport" that consists of nothing but USB thumb drive ports?  Would that address some of the issues with USB?  There's a guy on these forums who says that thumb drives give the best SQ.
 
Separately, or together, how about a device that is nothing but the burrito filter?  I'ld like to burrito filter into my digital preamp then coax out to my UberFrost.  Or, conversely, will the Manhattan burrito-ize on top of its other magic sauce?
 
Any Schiit-Priced transports with AES out?

 

[Ableza]

   There's a guy on these forums who says that thumb drives give the best SQ.

Compared to what?  He's high if he thinks a CD rip to USB drive will out perform the CD in a good transport with no USB involved.

 

[Zojokkeli]

It was well over 40°C today..  :mad:
Expecting over 45°C tomorrow    :angry_face:

I think anything over 20C starts to get uncomfortable.

 

[wink]

Today didn't disappoint.
Another day over 40°C, in fact it did reach slightly over 45°C
If you can believe the weather spooks, it has been the hottest summer in 150 years.
 
Didn't affect my YGGY, Though.  It's a hot item even in the middle of winter........   

 

[Blue Warper]

Thanks, Mike, for your commitment to improve upon digital audio technology.
 
Now, with regard to your recent posts, If I'm allowed to relate my own experience and opinion with digital sources, I must say I'm with you as to USB-connected media as a source and CD spinners as a transport.
 
I haven't finished ripping my entire CD collection yet, but I think in many cases a track played off a CD player sounds better to me than its rip off a digital file: my perception was I was hearing less electrical noise (perhaps related to very high-frequency digital activity, as one can hear when plugging a headphone into a standard desktop/notebook and doing his/her tasks with no music playing at all: very noticeable when a hard drive starts to spin, for example) and more tiny details (little reverb, low-volume sounds/music/effects, musicians' breaths, better pinpointed instruments/musicians, etc.).  Nothing huge, but somewhat evident to me, as it seems, 'though I only did occasional A/B-ings.
 
As to USB-connected sources, I dropped out of them when I first heard music played through my Raspberry Pi3 with a digital-out HAT ("Hardware Attached on Top": sort of little add-on board).  The digital board only has the 'lesser' outputs (i.e. optical and coax), but I felt it was a noticeable (to me, at least) improvement over USB from a PC (Raspberry's native USB port is reportedly noisy). And this is with cheap optical and coax cables (coax sounds better to my ears in this very system), and without even trying using a LPS (I once powered it from a battery powerbank, but I didn't do any comparison).
 
So, whatever you're coming with in this area, I think it'll be a very meaningful addition (and improvement) to every digital rig, and I have no doubt it'll be one of my next scheduled Schiit purchases (along with your ground-breaking Manhattan project, of course)!
 
And, since you kindly invited us to give some input, I'll take this opportunity to give you some thoughts and requests (in a following post, just in order not to clutter this up...)!
 

 

 

[Blue Warper]

(Follow-up post)
 
Quote:

  They have no idea that having a physical CD, playing it back on a real transport coupled with a proper interface which was designed for audio is the only digital way to fly. Period. Try it if you already sank into the dreams of computer audio.
 

 
For what it's worth, this is my experience too, albeit I'm just a generic user, not an engineer.  I think a CD player can provide a lower electrical noise-level than at least a generic USB solution (but having one's own archived digital collection at hand is surely more convenient, as it comes to file management, physical space and media storage).
 
 

Further, audio progressives pronounce CDs as digital audio media dead. I view this prevailing attitude as a fantastic opportunity to buy a ton of software on the cheap. That audio opinion leaders are almost always myopic.

 
My CD collection has indeed greatly increased after a got a vintage CD player (followed, shortly after, by the arrival of my Yggy), CDs being cheaper and cheaper being perhaps the main reason in my case.
 

Here's the rub - who wants to make a transport? They break, they are hard to source for long life products, and they involve major OEM components which severely mess with supply chains. So until I make a transport, it is really tough to make a claim to a solution of the USB/AOIP cesspool problem.  
Meanwhile, the relative unavailability of modern transports should keep the price of digital media low for a while longer, until we hit the inevitable inflation and then bubble.
 
Don't get me wrong – I will still endeavor to improve interfaces to beat any in the USB/AOIP arena. It makes sense for those who demand convenience over quality. One can argue a case for syphilis cures as being less consuming of resources than sexual partner reeducation camps. That reeducation curriculum is CDs rule – period.

 
Not trying to put words in your mouth, but am I correctly inferring from the above that you are at least taking into account the possibility you could ever make a transport (i.e. a physical CD spinner)?  Now, that would be really really interesting!  I've been wishing there'd be a Schiit transport for years, but always thought it was going to never happen, 'cause I seem to remember Jason once referred to such an event in his thread as being highly improbable (I may be wrong, though, as I'm relying on my memory right now).
The other major reason why I thought this would be difficult to see happen was that AFAIK we are no longer in the CD-mechanisms golden age, when - apart from some proprietary and expensive systems - Philips, Sony, TEAC, Pioneer (and the likes) ones were widely adopted by most manufacturers.  My vintage Marantz CD player (early 90s) is built like a tank, and it keeps reading every CD (even burnt copies).
So, if you'll ever design and make a CD transport, I'd like to see it coming with a durable and sturdily built mechanism and a suitable laser unit, possibly one that's not too expensive to replace in case of failure.  The above Marantz had a Philips CDM-4/19 mechanism, featuring a single-beam swing arm laser unit, which I think can be accounted for a more accurate tracking, based on an empirical comparison between it and another Sony KSS-213C-equipped CD player of mine (linear tracking, AFAIK), where the former is almost instantaneous in finding both TOC and tracks, while the latter being much more sluggish and fighting to read all CDs (especially newer ones exceeding the standard Redbook 74 minutes max length).
Based on my very limited (and maybe of little worth) experience, if you're going down the 'vintage' route, I'd like to see a Schiit transport designed around a Philips CDM (maybe the 'legendary' CDM-1 mk2?), but I don't know what your thoughts are about specific CD mechanisms, and I fear that it'll be very difficult to source a reasonable number of them in order to make as many transports as to reasonably fulfill all the foreseeable requests.  Anyway, you really got me very curious about the solution you'll be finding for that.  Again, IF I correctly inferred you are actually considering making a CD-transport.
(Oh, and please also give us some nice digital output, as BNC and/or AES/EBU!)
 
As for the 'digital interface' you've hinted at in some other posts of yours, this is a thing I've been wishing to ask for a long time, but I dared not... 

Till now.
I'm sure I'll buy it regardless, but if I'm allowed to make some requests, I'd like you could make a sort of a 'digital hub', i.e. one which you plug all your digital gear into, and some simple switches to select the desired input and outputs.  Somehow similar to a digital pre-amp, but without the -amp part

.  This would be a box where you would plug into, e. g., one (or more) CD-player(s) and/or DVD-A player(s), one (or more) PCs (I'm meaning a generic computer source here, not OS-related), DAP(s), tablet(s), and other digital sources, as for the inputs; and one or more DACs, DSPs, other digital processing gear (your upcoming Manhattan, for example... 

), as for the outputs.
So, basically, what I'm asking for is a box with multiple digital inputs and multiple digital outputs.  And I mean not just one input of a kind, but multiple inputs and outputs for each connection (so, for example, 2 optical inputs and 2 optical output; 2 USB inputs and 2 USB outputs; 2 coax in and 2 coax out, maybe 1 BNC in and 1 BNC out and 1 AES/EBU in and AES/EBU out, or more for some of them, if you like), with the ability to easily and quickly switch between them (thus - as a bonus feature - also enabling to do quick comparisons between different digital sources in the same system).  I'm sure you'll take care of isolating all the different interfaces, of course.
 
Would something like that make sense for you or would it even be worth your time and efforts?  Thanks for your time and your patience and your considering these (hopefully not completely dumb) suggestions...

 
PS - And sorry for the lengthy post...

 

[Vigrith]

Some us old timers that like listening to music as Albums, like that fact that with CDs (and LPs) the song transition from one to the other can have no break or when the timing of the break between the movements is part of the music the timing is maintained. With digital down loads or rips this is lost.

 
That's not always the case though, at least in my experience, with the desktop computer I am using both F2K as well as Tidal (assuming 1/1gbps internet may play part there too) have no (humanly noticeable) playback gaps at all - I listen to a plethora of concept albums and recordings where break timing is important within several genres and not once have I thought "oh man, I wish I didn't have to wait for the next song to kick in here, it ruins my immersion"; it is smooth every single time unless my internet's dying for some reason.
 
Now with my AK70 and with the previous DAPs/mp3 players I've owned, the story is different.

 

[watchnerd]

 
I bet most people who still favor CDs over online downloads do it because they like to own something tangible, not for some fancy technical reasons.

 
After I ripped all my CDs to my NAS, I traded them for vinyl.

 

[Blue Warper]

   
That's not always the case though, at least in my experience, with the desktop computer I am using both F2K as well as Tidal (assuming 1/1gbps internet may play part there too) have no (humanly noticeable) playback gaps at all - I listen to a plethora of concept albums and recordings where break timing is important within several genres and not once have I thought "oh man, I wish I didn't have to wait for the next song to kick in here, it ruins my immersion"; it is smooth every single time unless my internet's dying for some reason.
 
Now with my AK70 and with the previous DAPs/mp3 players I've owned, the story is different.

 
It's a feature called "gapless playback" (it should be almost standard nowadays, at least on personal computer sources; I read some DAPs can't handle it yet).

 

[Vigrith]

 
It's a feature called "gapless playback" (it should be almost standard nowadays, at least on personal computer sources; I read some DAPs can't handle it yet).

 
Indeed, I just didn't want to call that specifically because according to Tidal they don't actually do gapless playback - however it has been my personal experience that it does work like that despite them saying it isn't a feature they can't yet provide. F2K probably does have it as a feature, I barely use it nowadays because I much rather the convenience of Tidal but yea.
 
Funnily enough even though I play Tidal on my AK70 too (recently introduced) most the time the same way I do on my desktop, the gapless only works like half the time there hence my reasoning that it may have to do with my 1gb wired vs wireless connection.

 

[Blue Warper]

   
Indeed, I just didn't want to call that specifically because according to Tidal they don't actually do gapless playback - however it has been my personal experience that it does work like that despite them saying it isn't a feature they can't yet provide. F2K probably does have it as a feature, I barely use it nowadays because I much rather the convenience of Tidal but yea.
 
Funnily enough even though I play Tidal on my AK70 too (recently introduced) most the time the same way I do on my desktop, the gapless only works like half the time there hence my reasoning that it may have to do with my 1gb wired vs wireless connection.

Sorry if my post might have sounded a little abrupt: it wasn't my intention. I just wanted to be short!

Yes, F2K (which is my player of choice under Windows) does gapless natively.  Don't know about Tidal.
As to your issue with gapless playback on your AK70 (wireless) vs your desktop (1GB_eth wired), does it always occur (whenever it occurs) between two tracks (i.e. just when next track is supposed to start, right after the previous one) or randomly at whatever point in a track?  I mean, if it's a network-related problem (your wireless connection not being as fast as your 1GB wired, for example), why should it always occur at two tracks transition point?  It seems weird.
Maybe they fixed it with a newer firmware update?

 

[Vigrith]

Sorry if my post might have sounded a little abrupt: it wasn't my intention. I just wanted to be short!

Yes, F2K (which is my player of choice under Windows) does gapless natively.  Don't know about Tidal.
As to your issue with gapless playback on your AK70 (wireless) vs your desktop (1GB_eth wired), does it always occur (whenever it occurs) between two tracks (i.e. just when next track is supposed to start, right after the previous one) or randomly at whatever point in a track?  I mean, if it's a network-related problem (your wireless connection not being as fast as your 1GB wired, for example), why should it always occur at two tracks transition point?  It seems weird.
Maybe they fixed it with a newer firmware update?

 
Oh, no absolutely not, didn't come across as abrupt at all!
 
It only happens between tracks and it's barely there, I imagine it is mostly just related to the wireless network taking like half a second (some times a little longer) to "buffer" the next track once the previous one ends akin to youtube video etc, once it starts it's smooth sailing from there, don't experience drop outs ever even on wireless.
 
Might also be related to fireware yea, I personally haven't really looked into it much - I don't really do concept albums/live ensembles etc when I'm on the go so having a little bit of a gap isn't super bothersome.