What makes a good transport?

Looks like Tag no longer have any CDT20Rs around (see http://www.tagmclaren.com/great/sounds.asp and then click on "Factory Sales") but there may be some at a reasonably price on the s/h market. It and the DAC20 make a superb couple

So, obvioulsy in the great hifi sell off the DAC20 stayed?

The Teac P30 is an awesome transport - but you're looking at well over £1000 for one - I belive merlin's offering his for £1250.

Mandeep - I doubt that using the VRDS 25X as a transport would be much different than a T1 which you can get for a lot less. If he then wanted to do any clock mods there's a lot more space in the T1

Michael.

 

Apprant Ultimate transport is P0, me I'd go for a Wadia 270 SE, then a spot of 'Internal fiddling' be ok after that Wm

 

Teac P0 as rare as hens teeth - and then only in Japan. You're unlikely to find one for less than $10,000 either

It's a monster aswell:



Michael.

 

Rang up Tag to confirm, and indeed they have no CDT20Rs left.

Yes, the DAC20 stayed in the 'great hifi sell off'. Not a lot stayed TBH . Long term, still after this transport and a rock solid pre amp/headphone amp - and that's about it. For the time being the NAD is putting in sterling service in the juice department.

So i am pinned to a TEAC or a TAG it seems if a dedicated transport. Where is Cookie gonna find one of them s/h. Can't see any anywhere at the moment . You boys can scout for me

Using a £200 Philips DVD as a transport tonight, which i had collecting dust in the lounge - just about to hook it up - let it work some magic .

WM this DVD of mine weighs about 0.1KG - think it could do with some fattening up down in carrot cruncher territory.

cheers

 

Cookie, Try a meridain 500 transport MK2, (with the xlr's), the huge draw and the 8 hour wait to unload (still a week less then an sony sacd 1 ) It will give stering service, I had one as temperary fill in, when the dv 27 fried last year, it was better than DV27 (in my system, this is what really opened my eyes to transports)
pay about £450-£600 for one, will also 'travel with you' when you dispence with the dac 20's services Wm

In stock form most teac's are pretty laid back, good bass grip and detail, just not much forward momentum IMHO

 

Teac P0 :yikes: santa i've been a good boy this year ..

Valid points Michael however I read that older teacs vrds suffer alot from laser failure but unlike some other mechs are completely repairable. For me the long term cost simply out weighed the advantages. I had a previous vrds fail on me but was easily and more importantly a cheap repair (DIY).

Dare I ask, what mods have you had done and at what cost?

Would the audionote be in budget Dino?

 

Ok, thats a Meridian on the list too.

Can you guys post up if you see any for sale anywhere, in case i miss them

thanks

 

Dino - there's a Meridian 500 on eBay at the moment:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3053703909&category=3272

Under £400 right now (and it's the latest model) but the auction has a while to go and the seller is in the US

I have a regular eBay "watch" on transports so I'll let you know if anything interesting comes up.

Mandeep - my T1 mods (done by WM ) were: replace the captive mains lead with an IEC socket and use some of WM's "special" mains wire internally, install a Trichord Clock 4 clock upgrade powered by the Trichord "Never Connect" PSU, pack the thing with Dynamat in all conceiveable places for extra damping

See this thread for details when WM did pretty much the same thing to timpy's T1. As for the costs, I'll send you a PM.

Michael.

 

how much is that?

Budget is not necessarily the issue. It is more a case of getting something which will mate with the DAC20 and last me a good while. So it is pointless to get somethin 'overkill' at this stage. I don't want to keep changing. Just wanna get something decent together and live with it for a wee while.

 

Cookie

Hifi Guy (ooer sounds like a personals ad!) has a range of interesting cdps/transports for less than a grand including a Burmester Rondo, Roksan Rok and Audiomeca Mephisto I (the one w-out the custom transport I'm afraid). The bargain of the lot would appear to be the just serviced/laser replaced Rok at £350. I've no idea how it sounds though...


reg

 

http://cgi.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cl.pl?dgtltran&1071412178&class&3&4&

 

He's covered the mech with green marker pen and is claiming that as a "tweak". Vandalism more like, and presumably why it's so cheap. Looks absolutely hideous to my eyes.

-- Ian

 

If Merlin is selling his P30, maybe it's because he knows that Teac are about to introduce a genuine VRDS universal player (as opposed to one that uses a Zony mec) as well as a VRDS CD / SACD box. The universal player (assunimg it ever sees the light in Europe & the US) will cost serious money.
FWIW, The P0 is, I believe, only made to special order.
Teac have recently introduced a very expensive master clock generator that owners of the P0 will no doubt be lining up for
CEC also make a statement (belt drive!!!) transport that is in a similar class to the P0. And, of course, 47 Labs' pi tracer is pretty trick.
Don't forget that in the West you get the export model Teacs which weigh approx 8kgs less than the ones we get here and are an iteration or two behind the Teac technology curve.
Teac have also produced a new monoblock amp which looks mighty impressive. Sounds impressive driving the Avantguarde Trio.

 

There I've been replying merrily to this thread completely forgetting that I've got my old Marantz CD50SE with Trichord Clock 3/Digital Output Board sitting on a shelf doing nothing in my office.

Did stirling service as my transport when I had the DAC20 (the very same DAC20 Cookie now has so they're well acquainted).

Was thinking of maybe using it as a standalone CD player again in a 2nd (office) system but that's unlikely to happen so it's nominally for sale. It has XLR (AES/EBU) digital out aswell as a separate high quality RCA output also running off the Trichord output board.

See http://www.zerogain.com/hifi/dob_install.html for details of when I installed the Trichord DOB.

Make me an offer!

A couple of caveats:
- it doesn't have any feet anymore but I can give you a set of 4 Vibrapods which I used to use with it.
- the CDP was new in 1990 so it's getting on a bit. Still worked pretty much flawlessly for me though.

Michael.

 

Here is the CEC transport.

This is the classic TL1 - which it appears CEC are discontinuing. A great shame that IMO.


Unfortunately, the German guy who now seems to run things at CEC is running them downhill with bad speakers and boring Chinese electronics (as opposed to interesting Chinese electronics, which I'm all in favour of).
Another great marque about to bite the dust...

 

and they would cost.................???

 

...and again at the other end of the scale:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3053866500

Cambridge DiscMagic and S700 DAC together. Starting bid £149, no reserve, no bids yet. Didn't realise that the two came with a clock link He says the coax output is broken which is a bit of a downer

He's slightly over-egging it though:

"Comparisons with Mark Levinson kit have been made and aren't far off the mark, especially with good HDCD discs"

Yeah right

Michael.

 

Hey MO,
THe TL1 cost I think in the region of $3.4 ~4K the big one is in the same league as the P0 - so count on around $18K. I'll take 6
The TL1 gets good writee up and can be had for under $2K from time to time. Battleship build all around and a top performer by all accounts.
Tlalking of Top performers. It's Eng vs SA now in the blood donation world championship.

 

In the top bracket there's also the transport that titian has - the Metronome Kalista:



Cost is £15,350 to you sir

Michael.

 

THE CHANCES OF ANYTHING COMING FROM MARS, ARE A MILLION TO ONE, THEY SAID.

BUT STILL, THEY CAME.



(just jealousy on my side!!!)