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Ripping CD's and expensive CD transports

eickmewg

eickmewg

Well-Known Member
So, I've ripped a number of my favorite CD's to my laptop. Awhile ago, I invested in a Cambridge Audio CXC transport. This got me thinking (always a dangerous thing to do.)
The transport does a fine job of reading Red Book CD's and sending data to the DAC. But I realize that I am ripping FLAC files using a $15 external USB drive. The FLAC files ripped on this cheap drive sound just as good when streamed to the system; after all, it is just O's and 1's. Why then did I buy a $450 CD transport that basically does the same thing? At least the CXC looks cool.
 
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True. A CD is simply a storage medium for digital files. The digital file does not change depending on where it's stored, unless there is some kind of file corruption.
 
eickmewg said:
So, I've ripped a number of my favorite CD's to my laptop. Awhile ago, I invested in a Cambridge Audio CXC transport. This got me thinking (always a dangerous thing to do.)
The transport does a fine job of reading Red Book CD's and sending data to the DAC. But I realize that I am ripping FLAC files using a $15 external USB drive. The FLAC files ripped on this cheap drive sound just as good when streamed to the system; after all, it is just O's and 1's. Why then did I buy a $450 CD transport that basically does the same thing? At least the CXC looks cool.
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So you can listen to the new Dave’s Picks as soon as it shows up in the mail, before you’ve had time to rip it?

Or is that just me?
 
Having been involved in IT for decades, this is something I've been saying since separate transports started coming out. Bear in mind that in the computer world, even a single corrupted bit can make an entire file unreadable (depending on the file type), yet we manage to read complete CDs and DVDs with no trouble, due to built-in error correction, and transmit data on cheap unshielded 4 pair wire with hundreds or thousands of times the bandwidth of digital audio, again with no loss. So spend money on a good DAC if you want, but don't expect the storage medium or retrieval mechanism to make a difference in the sound.
 
I use the Asus and Lite-On optical drives in my production PC's to extract audio from CD's using Sound Forge Pro. Other than my Blu-ray burners I've never spent more than $15 new on them from Newegg including shipping. On a side note I scored a like-new Lite-On iHBS212 Blu-ray burner off Ebay last month for $15. The seller said it read discs perfectly but wouldn't burn them at all without errors. He said he only used it a few times before replacing it. I flashed it to the latest firmware and it burns perfectly now.
 
From what learned from watching a PS Audio Youtube video, the transport can make a difference in sound quality... but not very much. More important is the DAC. This would seem to mean that you're getting some extra performance out of your high quality transport, even if it isn't enough to actually hear!
 
Aaron Hayman said:
From what learned from watching a PS Audio Youtube video, the transport can make a difference in sound quality... but not very much. More important is the DAC. This would seem to mean that you're getting some extra performance out of your high quality transport, even if it isn't enough to actually hear!
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I like Paul's videos, but he sometimes strays into "questionable" science. Assuming a CD drive/player is reading all the bits properly, in the correct order, and sending them in a steady stream, how would a better transport help?
 
eickmewg said:
Why then did I buy a $450 CD transport that basically does the same thing?
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The one difference is rippers like the one I use (dbPoweramp) will take as many retries to get the data correct. "Real time" transports must do that on the fly to minimize jitter. Yet another reason I prefer using media servers like LMS. Mine runs on a Synology NAS with enough memory to effectively buffer an entire album.

Bits are bits but timing varies.
 
Aaron Hayman said:
From what learned from watching a PS Audio Youtube video, the transport can make a difference in sound quality... but not very much. More important is the DAC. This would seem to mean that you're getting some extra performance out of your high quality transport, even if it isn't enough to actually hear!
Click to expand...
Keep in mind that Paul's there to sell products. His opinions aren't gonna be unbiased and he feeds into a lot of bunk that audiophiles insist is "truth" without any valid science behind it.

Of course he's never gonna say that transports don't make a difference in sound - he needs to sell them. As long as the transport is spitting out the right data to the DAC (either internal or external), I challenge anyone to hear an audible difference. I can't think of any modern transports in proper working order incapable of reading data off a disc and keeping a clock. Can you?
 
benricci said:
Keep in mind that Paul's there to sell products. His opinions aren't gonna be unbiased and he feeds into a lot of bunk that audiophiles insist is "truth" without any valid science behind it.

Of course he's never gonna say that transports don't make a difference in sound - he needs to sell them. As long as the transport is spitting out the right data to the DAC (either internal or external), I challenge anyone to hear an audible difference. I can't think of any modern transports in proper working order incapable of reading data off a disc and keeping a clock. Can you?
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No doubt... I don't take anything that I learn on the internet to be necessarily absolute truth. The PS audio guy does somehow seem more credible than a lot of folks. I'm no tech expert so I'm unwilling to say anything like "that must be absolutely true because I totally understand the science of it." The way that it was explained seemed to have some kind of logic to it though, with him saying that the timing is a bit better with the very best transports which makes a bit of difference. He also mentioned that there exist ones with very large buffers which organize the info after the fact, effectively negating the quality of the transport mechanism itself. The whole thing seemed more credible to me as he wasn't in any way trying to sell folks on expensive transports as he stressed that any difference that they made was very subtle and that it makes more sense to spend more on other components. In another video he recommended to folks using a cheap CD player as a transport and spending more of your budget on a DAC, so it doesn't seem that he has any really dogma about expensive CD transports... All of this is really just academic to me as I'll never be throwing money at any kind of CD transport myself. Even if I were to win the lottery jackpot tomorrow, I still don't think that I'd bother with one of those...
 
Aaron Hayman said:
with him saying that the timing is a bit better with the very best transports which makes a bit of difference
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It's nonsense, though. In an integrated CD player, the DAC clock is the master of all system timing, and the internal CD transport data recovery is slaved to that clock, with a FIFO buffer to allow some variation within the servo tracking loop (and also form part of the CIRC recovery). A system where the DAC clock is master provides the best timing, with the clock generated slap-bang next to the DAC chip, and buffered and distributed for use elsewhere in the system. Sure, that clock design can be screwed up with a bad implementation, but so can a remote-clocked system using a CD transport.

With a CD transport feeding an external SPDIF DAC (which is a unidirectional interface), the clock is sourced by the transport, and delivered to the DAC as part of a protocol from which the clock must be recovered. That clock must either be used to drive the DAC, or there must be a means of adapting the incoming recovered clock to the local DAC clock (e.g. ASRC sample rate correction filter). Whilst these techniques are very well implemented by modern, single-chip devices, they are processes that are entirely unnecessary in an integrated, DAC clock master solution (or in an 'asynchronous' DAC clock master USB protocol interface).

If you want good timing in a CD player, use a well-designed DAC clock in an integrated player; don't split the transport from the DAC and then connect them with a unidirectional interface that forces you to use a recovered clock or sample rate correction.

Even better, rip the CD to FLAC, which allows repeated read attempts to recover errors (not possible in a CD player without a large data buffer), and send them to a DAC with an 'asynchronous', DAC clock master, bidirectional USB interface with a FIFO buffer and flow control.
 
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