What happened to the dedicated CD transport ?

[Chris J]

Per AQVOX, they showed a measure of ~50mV of DC ripple on the 5V USB power line. This is without hdd access. With hdd access, they show closer to 100mV. The ATX specification states that a unit should remain at or below 120mV of ripple and noise on the 12v rail while under 50mV on the 3.3v/5v rails. This means that the quality of the 5V DC power coming from a typical USB port would fail the ATX spec, which is pretty generous. An ATX power supply that is bumping up against the ATX limits isn't a good one. So, you have very noisy, poor quality power coming from the USB port. That's why all of the better converters (apart from the Diverter 192) operate on either batteries or wall AC. The other problem besides the crappy power is the ground noise, which is where galvanic isolation comes in.

The Benchmarks might be "no nonsense" but they also aren't that good. Their USB tech is beyond obsolete, and the SRC and output stages are mediocre. The sound is bright, sterile, and tiring. You can do better for less - the Audiolab M-DAC or example.

Ahhhhhh, the Benchmark!
The DAC everyone loves to hate!

The noise I was referring to was the noise conducted down the power line.
I don't think a cheap transport manufacturer is concerned about how much noise they conduct down the powerline and how much noise they radiate.
It is also possible to conduct noise down the digital output.

A lot of people ignore this because most can't measure it or fix it.

 

[estreeter]

Something tells me Shanling's designers may be very big fans of the Bioshock series :
 

 
Gotta love Art Deco - it comes back every 5 or 10 years but somehow seems 'fresh' with every incarnation. 
 

 

[DaveBSC]

Straight out of the 1920s.
 

 

[El_Doug]

...then how do you know it's there? 
 
Quote:

A lot of people ignore this because most can't measure it or fix it.

 

[Penarin]

Quote:

Nobody builds anything in house for $300, certainly not transports. The VAST majority of CD players and transports, even the mega buck stuff, use a transport made either by Philips or one of the huge Japanese electronics companies. Linn created their own for the Unidisk, but that's really unusual for a fairly small company to do.

So are you saying Cambridge is being dishonest, and their player actually has the same $5 transport mechanism you find in a $18 PC CD drive?
 
I don't know much about CD player internals but here's a shot of the inside of the 350C-
 
http://www.cambridgeaudio.com/assets/documents/350CTop.jpg

 

[DaveBSC]

Quote:

So are you saying Cambridge is being dishonest, and their player actually has the same $5 transport mechanism you find in a $18 PC CD drive?
 
I don't know much about CD player internals but here's a shot of the inside of the 350C-
 
http://www.cambridgeaudio.com/assets/documents/350CTop.jpg

 
It's not about being dishonest. Cambridge is not taking somebody else's finished box, slapping their name on it, and tripling the price. Here's a shot of the VRDS Neo alongside transports from Pioneer, Denon, and Philips. Most of the high-end CD players and transports that don't use the VRDS use one of those three, the Philips CD Pro2 probably being the most common. For Cambridge to design and build their own transport would require a vast amount of engineering and resources that they just don't have. Pretty much the only company that can do whatever they want with their transport designs is Esoteric, thanks to the backing of Teac. TAD's D600 might come close to the top Esoterics thanks to Pioneers resources.
 
What Cambridge probably does is buy somebody's transport, and then modify it. That's very common, and I think you could say that something is "yours" if you change some of the components and come up with something unique.
 

 

[Chris J]

Quote:

Something tells me Shanling's designers may be very big fans of the Bioshock series :
 

 
Gotta love Art Deco - it comes back every 5 or 10 years but somehow seems 'fresh' with every incarnation. 
 
 

 
Hey!
That's my CD player!
 
Quote:

...then how do you know it's there? 
 

 
I assume you are joking? Or maybe not, maybe asking a serious question.
OK.
Thanks for asking.

 
To expand:
Most manufacturer's don't have the equipment to measure it, the know-how to interpret the measurements and the knowlwdge to fix it.
 
When I worked in the Power Supply design world we had to outsource the measurement of EMI and RFI.
Then we had to consult with the experts to figure out how to fix the problem, then measure it again to ensure the "fixes" really worked.
Then we had to pay to get it certified.
And all the while we were spending $$$.

 
Why?
We were trying to meet a spec. called FCC Class B for the US market and another CE spec for EMI/RFI noise immunity/conductance/radiation, etc. for the European market.

 

[estreeter]

Quote:

Straight out of the 1920s.
 

 
Manley's pricetags are straight out of the 2320's .... 

 

[Chris J]

Quote:

 
Manley's pricetags are straight out of the 2320's .... 

 
Yesterday's technology at tomorrow's prices?

 

[Penarin]

Quote:

 
It's not about being dishonest. Cambridge is not taking somebody else's finished box, slapping their name on it, and tripling the price. Here's a shot of the VRDS Neo alongside transports from Pioneer, Denon, and Philips. Most of the high-end CD players and transports that don't use the VRDS use one of those three, the Philips CD Pro2 probably being the most common. For Cambridge to design and build their own transport would require a vast amount of engineering and resources that they just don't have. Pretty much the only company that can do whatever they want with their transport designs is Esoteric, thanks to the backing of Teac. TAD's D600 might come close to the top Esoterics thanks to Pioneers resources.
 
What Cambridge probably does is buy somebody's transport, and then modify it. That's very common, and I think you could say that something is "yours" if you change some of the components and come up with something unique.
 

 
Nice.  That is a beast of a transport!

 

[NA Blur]

I suggest remove the moving parts altogether and go with bit-perfect rips of you CD collection.  As stated numerous times a good USB / TOSLINK DAC is going sound every bit as good as a transport and DAC because in the end it is all about jitter and timing.
 
To quote something from Headroom:
"Now, here's the exception to our rule about sources being so critical: when constructing a front-end for your stereo system, it is much less important where the digital signal is coming from when a very high-quality DAC is used. We've even found, in fact, that sometimes very expensive CD transports sound only slightly better than the digital output of inexpensive CD players or USB audio outputs from computers when using a good DAC. So, keep that in mind when putting together your rig!"
 
This has been my experience.  I have tried so many types of CD players and DVD players and when feeding my m903 via USB I cannot tell a different between any of them.  Removing any possible motor noise and the AC it may carry can only be a good thing.  I will admit that getting a perfect and artifact free rip of a CD can prove difficult especially with all of the new music players out there.

 

[AJHeadfi]

I believe it's good to keep in mind that our electronic audio reproduction is both science and more importantly art. That is "state of the art" applies fully.
 
It's awefully difficult to measure art, once it is successfully empirically measured it has become science.
 
There does not seem to be anything less tangible or trivial about punching out an aluminium disc with a glass master. Gold standard to this day. "But it's just bits" you say? Nay sir, nay.
 
... those CD "jewel" plastic cases are toooooo bulky! So I'd like to ditch that.

 

[Currawong]

I found this to be a long, but excellent read regarding transports. 
 
http://lampizator.eu/LAMPIZATOR/TRANSPORT/CD_transport_DIY.html
 
If you add to this learning how CDs work, the idea of using CDs in a high-end system ends up seeming pretty crazy.
 
I figure though that expensive players exist because, when many of the people that can afford them are professional whatevers, with lots of experience and knowledge of their own profession, they don't have time to learn about newer technology. Since they would have been brought up on CDs, that, and SACDs is what they use. Future generations will probably stream music from their computers.

 

[AJHeadfi]

Interesting. That is way too long reading for me  ... only using my ears and not knowing all this stuff, the best method for me. But how computers streaming have come along nicely recently.

 

[RonaldDumsfeld]

Here's one.  Left over from the Audiophile equivalent of the Neolithic era.
 
http://www.naimaudio.com/hifi-products/pdt-type/cd555
 
$20,000, Yes that's right. It's thousands rather than a decimal point. All it does is play CDs. In a blind test you wouldn't be able to tell it apart from a $20 optical drive and regular SoC DAC assembly.