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Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it.

RE: Any Benefit To Better CD Transports When Using DAC?

It's too much money. The transport used in the Bryston BCD-1 is good but not by any means considered an elite unit - it is the Philips L1210 transport mechanism (no longer made). The same transport mechanism is in the dedicated Stello CDT200 transport as well as the Sim Audio Equinox and Audio Note entry level CD players.

You'll notice Bryston doesn't give 20 year warranties on things with moving parts - it's rather safe to give 20 year warranties to power amps and DACs and even a preamp - chances are most amplifiers from companies that give 5 year warranties will last 25+ years anyway. But when there is risk involved as there is with any machine that has a spinning motor - you won't see these long warranties (or the price will be high enough to expect the inevitable repair).

I read an article some years back that the "average" life expectancy of CD/DVD players was 7 years.

You would probably be better to get a TASCAM or TEAC machine that uses a VRDS transport or a Philips Pro2 or possibly a lightly used Pioneer Stable platter - people seemed to like them.

As for differences that depends. I have heard very little(usually none) differences in transports with some dacs and bigger differences with others depending on the DAC.

With the way the market is I would be loathe to invest heavily on transport. The big transport makers have stopped making them (Philips) so unless the smaller makers who are buying the transports build their own - it may be tough to get replacements.

My Line Magnetic CD player uses a hugely common Sony KSS 213C transport - there should be large numbers of them for quite some time - but Sony has stopped making them as well I believe. Perhaps a replacement can fit in the machine if it should fail.

Here is a list of transports so you can possibly find a machine for less money than the Bryston. But transports impact different DA converters differently and I suspect it's why a lot of blind listening sessions of transports end in failures - there are only so many transport mechanisms and many manufacturers use the exact same ones. They also often use the exact same DA converter chips - coupled with cheap players using cheap power supplies it is no wonder people struggle to tell one CD player from another.




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