What is the use of a good transport?

I readin one of the threads here that buffered DAC's remove all the jitter from a digital source.

If this is true, then why spend £1500 on a low jitter CD transport when the DAC would filter off the jitter from a £20 one?

Is there something I am overlooking here?

 

Therein lies an argument. Some say it still makes a difference anyway. Some say that if you use optical to remove the RF signature of the transport then it makes no difference whatsoever. Some say that it makes no difference with any DAC ever and that all CD players and DACs sound the same.

Commence the opening of the can of worms.

 

Nice - it's been at least a month or two since we had this argument

The Benchmark DAC1 completely eliminates incoming jitter (this is verifiable) however some who have heard it claim that different transports do sound different with it. If that's the case then I have no idea what effect is going on there.

Similarly, the Chord DAC64 on the 4s buffer ought to pretty much eliminate input jitter (contrary to the DAC1 claims, this has not been proven) and, using an optical digital connector I did try various transports (my Teac T1, battery operated Discman, DVD player) and I thought there were small differences between them.

Michael.

 

Interstingly this new saviour was found to sound exactly the same as a Sony XA20ES recently, so I guess you are better off just buying an integrated.

 

michael-

0s, 2s, 4s makes no difference to the sound on the DAC64.

 

Make yourself a nice cup of tea, get a stack of biscuits ready, then click here.

See you in a month or two

 

I haven't heard the DAC1 merlin, but it is demonstrably immune to incoming jitter. I've no idea whether it sounds any good

Is that in your experience or what Rob Watts says? Rob certainly has said in the past that there should be no sonic difference between the 2s and 4s buffer (and IME that's true) but I certainly remember a change (for the worse) with the buffer switched off alltogether.

Michael.

 

Merlin - an integrated with the transport and DACs run off the same clock will be essentially the same as a transport/DAC with no jitter introduced between them, all jitter in the system arising from the master clock.

Michael - That's what he stated in that thing you posted long since. When I've asked him he's not suddenly changed his mind. Even the 0s setting has some buffering, it's just a matter of where the software pointer points to.

 

You all know thats why a dac1 and nos dac's all sound the same with a £30 richer special or a Uber Burmester. why worry I don't