Do different transports make a difference?

Albert

Albert

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I am breaking in a new Teac UD-503 DAC with an Oppo BDP-95 as a transport connected by a Black Cat Silver Star 75 digital coax cable. Being home sick with the flu today I thought why not try using one of my old Faroudja DV-1000 DVD players as a transport. It is a well built unit and sounded very good as a CD player in it's day. I figured even if the DAC is old, the transport is still well made.

So I rearranged the system and substituted the Faroudja for the Oppo. It actually sounds better to me. The cymbals that sounded a bit too hot (sizzly) now shimmered and everything seemed more in balance. It even sounded warmer to me, how could that be from a transport? I am not sure why there is a difference but I am going to keep the Faroudja in the system. Hopefully when my Calyx Femto arrives i will find the same results.

Here are a few snaps of my newly configured system with the Faroudja DV-1000.

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They most certainly do.

I was originally a (big) skeptic - coming from a technical background (Masters in Advanced Computer Science - included a fair bit of EE and whatnot) - I was very much aligned with 'bits are bits'.

My ears told me otherwise however. Humble pie and all that :¬)

A great guy (with golden ears - did ridiculously well on Tylls Big Sound blind testing) on another forum spent some time with various servers; TotalDAC, Aurender N10, CAPS and CAD CAT (UK based) and found the CAD CAT to be the best. He's not heard a Lumin yet.

Enjoy the music! :¬)
 
No doubt about it.
Different transport sound different.
Can't explain why and how .
But they do.
 
Generally speaking those that believe that transports can't make any sonic difference argue that since it's reading a digital signal it's automatically perfect, with each bit simply being a one or a zero. There is no chance of any mistakes due to digital error correction, and that the digital signal read must be perfect or computers and their hard drives wouldn't work consistently. The error in that argument is that the "digital" signal output by a transport and transmitted over a "digital" cable is not truly digital, but is rather an analog representation of a digital signal. The recovered analog signal after digital to analog conversion is affected by the timing of the digital clock signal which is embedded in the data transitions. This clock signal needs to be recovered for conversion to analog, and the timing of that clock is affected by jitter. The "digital" signal received has state transitions between the zeros and ones levels, and the timing of those transitions is what determines the clock signal recovered. Unfortunately in the real world these state transitions are not perfectly clean nor are they timed exactly as they should be due to the effects of jitter. This explains why we do hear differences in transports and digital cables, they are not as perfect as we would like them to be or as many believe the theory suggests they should be. Better quality transports and digital cables can sound better since they produce and transmit a cleaner waveform while minimizing the effects of jitter. Jitter is also created by impedance mismatches in the loading between the sending and receiving end of digital cables, so that is another factor that can cause audible differences in digital cables.

Hope that this helps to explain why there are differences in transports and digital cables, even though there are many who believe otherwise and that this is all audiophile snake oil. The truth is as I have explained above, that digital signal transmission when used for audio applications is in actuality much less than an exact science.
 
That makes sense, thanks. I can imagine that is why it is good to have a well made, heavier transport that is more immune to vibrations. A heavier case with damping, isolation feet and a more robust laser assembly should help. Also shielding from the power supplies and separate shielded digital and analog sections should reduce electrical noise inside. I use a 75 ohm well shielded digital coax cable (Black Cat Silver Star 75) as well to make sure the impedance matches and limit rfi. The transport and DAC are connected to a Consonance power filter to make sure I have clean power as well. I think everything makes a difference and it is accumulative.
 
+1 to Audio.Bill .

I have a BMC BDCD1 which functions as transport-only, paired with a BMC DAC1. It employs what they call Superlink, which is four 75-ohm BNC cables which separately carry right and left clock, bit clock and digital audio data. Compared to SPDIF, or Toslink from the same setup, the sound is significantly improved. It is also better than my prior transport, which was T+A "R" series. BMC states that by carrying the signals separately, it removes the bundling/unbundling from within the single cable and improves clarity. Whatever the reason, it works and there is a difference in sound quality of transports.
 
Thanks guys! Hopefully my explanation helped to validate some of the technical reasons why there can be audible differences between transports and digital cables.
 
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