How Good a CD Transport is Required to Sound Better than Streaming?

Esoteric-CD.jpg
There seems to be a fairly solid consensus (Lucasz Ficus, LL21, Al M, etc.) that CD playback or computer file playback, or perhaps both, sound better than streaming (assuming, of course, that all other variables, including the DAC, are held constant).

But I assume that one cannot assume that any device that can spin a CD necessarily will achieve better sound quality than will streaming.

So how good a CD transport does one need to achieve CD playback which sounds better than streaming? Where do the lines (rising sound quality of better transport and streaming sound quality) cross?
 
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not a relevant point to my point. he is free to say anything he wants to on his own blog, and then accept the personal responsibility. i like Lukasz, owned and like his products, he has been to my home. also not relevant.

as a manufacturer here there are expectations (not TOS issues) of not taking shots at other manufacturers. and then when he gets 'special' protections outside the TOS, he opens himself to being judged more harshly too. no free lunch.
I know all of that history Mike, but you miss my point. These are his observations as a technician BEFORE he became a manufacturer and are based on old models, but the principles remain and interested people can see the rationale in these old blogs. Even if he never posted here, the info has long been out there and can easily be found. One is free to agree or disagree based on the details he shared in the blogs. He does not and never did physical make transports, so I dont think he has a dog in the fight...Just a technician's view.
 
Excerpt:

Known good transports:​



TEAC TRANSPORT


This is an example of an excellent transport machine - from a legendary specialist - TEAC. They produced under their PRO label named TASCAM some nice transports for broadcasting and studios. Their mechanics were Sony KSA151A with cast metal VRDS clamp and a wired remote, able to control the timing of CD up to milliseconds.
I did not take the trace photo, sorry.

Below is the home version of the Tascam - its brother

AND

More on VDRS. The FULL metal bracketed one is the one to get according to him:

Teac T1 transport and VRDS secrets revealed.​

In case you didn't know it already, VRDS is a genius innovation from TEAC company and the abbreviation stands for Very Rigid Disc Clamping System.
You can trust me - this is ROCKET SCIENCE.
That's why VRDS is used by the worlds finest and most expensive CD players like top level Wadia, Spectral, Esoteric, Tascam, and of course TEAC. (anyway - Esoteric and Tascam are brands of teac company - the former is for filthy rich americans (sort of a Lexus) and the latter is for pro market - radio, broadcasting, studio, recording companies.)

There are 3 different levels of VRDS: Top one: full metal, middle one: metal-carbon composite hybrid and the cheap one : full plastic.
 
I know all of that history Mike, but you miss my point. These are his observations as a technician BEFORE he became a manufacturer and are based on old models, but the principles remain and interested people can see the rationale in these old blogs. Even if he never posted here, the info has long been out there and can easily be found. One is free to agree or disagree based on the details he shared in the blogs. He does not and never did physical make transports, so I dont think he has a dog in the fight...Just a technician's view.
as a representative of Lampizator i get your perspective. unfortunately that does not change my perspective at all.

no one should be able to get legit content removed, or threads moved, without a justification. and when it happens we all lose.
 
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as a representative of Lampizator i get your perspective. unfortunately that does not change my perspective at all.

no one should be able to get legit content removed, or threads moved, without a justification. and when it happens we all lose.
I am NOT a representative of Lampizator or any product here. Never was, as I worked in BioTech/Pharma. I am job hunting now...BTW. Marty and Golum know this. LoL

My point is about the mechanisms that Lukas pulled apart more than 13 years ago and the info in interesting to read and evaluate. I know nothing about legit content being removed, so cant comment there one way or another. I didnt mean to suggest I was arguing that point. I am just interested in the technical discussions circa transport (eg VDRS quality, etc). Unfortunately, I dont come on line here very often nowadays, so tend to miss any drama.
 
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I am NOT a representative of Lampizator or any product here. Never was, as I worked in BioTech/Pharma. I am job hunting now...BTW. Marty and Golum know this. LoL
ok, sorry.
My point is about the mechanisms that Lukas pulled apart more than 13 years ago and the info in interesting to read and evaluate. I know nothing about legit content being removed, so cant comment there one way or another. I didnt mean to suggest I was arguing that point. I am just interested in the technical discussions circa transport (eg VDRS quality, etc). Unfortunately, I dont come on line here very often nowadays, so tend to miss any drama.
i don't question those 15 year old opinions. they are data points for purchasers like any data points that have to judged by their relevance to any question today. if you are looking for a vintage transport hen they have more value. whereas a new fresh product today, maybe not much value.
 
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ok, sorry.

i don't question those 15 year old opinions. they are data points for purchasers like any data points that have to judged by their relevance to any question today. if you are looking for a vintage transport hen they have more value. whereas a new fresh product today, maybe not much value.
No Problem Mike. Good points, but innards like the VDRS TECH do matter and are good points to consider as are laser quality, and how the signal is terminated before outputting to the Dac. I have no problem with the TEAC choice you made at all (I quite like it), especially if its the full or partial metal clamp. Even the plastic one sounded good back them and Lucas complaint was the high price for that. However, I see that the price you paid was NOT high, so you really cant go wrong there.
 
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I only spin CDs; , based upon my experience with them for the last 40 years I think you'll find the condition of yours just fine
Amen to that, although I do stream a lot of music as well. Still, there’s a beauty to the presentation of CD box sets that streaming cannot match. Just received hot off the press the latest limited edition 7-CD box set from the incomparable Mosaic Records known for their legendary compilations on vinyl (most now sold out) and CD. This collection features recordings from 1963-1970 of Bobby Hutcherson. Sonics as usual are fabulous. But equally superlative is the stunning 13-page full size liner notes with beautiful black and white photographs. This is a collectible art form for music that sustains the soul for decades. I have several others from them (including the “dry as a martini” Paul Desmond playing in Toronto). You cannot stream these albums, as far as I know.

IMG_6331.jpeg
 
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Some of his comments come over a little on the funny side, considering his pricing and clients now ! :rolleyes:

"That's why VRDS is used by the worlds finest and most expensive CD players like top level Wadia, Spectral, Esoteric, Tascam, and of course TEAC. (anyway - Esoteric and Tascam are brands of teac company - the former is for filthy rich americans (sort of a Lexus) and the latter is for pro market - radio, broadcasting, studio, recording companies.) and
"

MBL made by people who do not care about cost​

MBL from Berlin is famous for their "telephone number" price tags and good products. TOTALLY TUBE FREE I must add.
Since I am not a German dentist, I have no idea how MBL sounds or even looks. I never will.
People who own MBL are NOT the same people who say to me: Lukas, would you like to lampize my player please ?!?
 
Gdofwealth: When you say streaming, do you mean like Tidal or locally from your NAS or generically you mean BOTH?
 
Some of his comments come over a little on the funny side, considering his pricing and clients now ! :rolleyes:

"That's why VRDS is used by the worlds finest and most expensive CD players like top level Wadia, Spectral, Esoteric, Tascam, and of course TEAC. (anyway - Esoteric and Tascam are brands of teac company - the former is for filthy rich americans (sort of a Lexus) and the latter is for pro market - radio, broadcasting, studio, recording companies.) and
"

MBL made by people who do not care about cost​

MBL from Berlin is famous for their "telephone number" price tags and good products. TOTALLY TUBE FREE I must add.
Since I am not a German dentist, I have no idea how MBL sounds or even looks. I never will.
People who own MBL are NOT the same people who say to me: Lukas, would you like to lampize my player please ?!?
I would love to get my hands on a functional vintage TASCAM with the full metal VDRS mechanism!
 
Gdofwealth: When you say streaming, do you mean like Tidal or locally from your NAS or generically you mean BOTH?
Good question. I meant streaming from Qobuz or Tidal through Roon, mostly, but also ripped physical media. I hear compression artifacts, not very different from what I see when streaming 4K over Netflix. When you play a 4K Blu Ray disc (e.g., Oppo 205D) on a state of the art projector and compare it to Netflix 4K streaming, the compression that Netflix does is very obvious. We have no control on source level compression. Quality varies depending on bit rate transmission.

I find playback of ripped CDs from a hard drive distinctly inferior to actual CD playback from my CEC TL0. CD ripping involves spinning a CD ROM at high speeds (often 20-30x) that seems to incur a far higher level of read errors requiring much higher Reed Solomon error correction. In the worst case, these are audible clicks when the ripper was unable to correct errors. Playing ripped CDs or SACDs, which I do often, is a convenient solution but it incurs a sonic degradation. As the saying goes, what the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away.

The best SACD playback is from a high quality SACD transport (e.g., Esoteric, or even Oppo). The ripped DSD files seem to sound worse to my ears. I expect layers of intermediate processing in Roon affects playback quality. It’s like a graying out of the sound. Like comparing high quality RAW files from a medium format camera like a Hasselblad to a JPEG file. Initially the JPEG looks ok, but you notice the compression if you look closely.
 
I hear you. My physical CD player is a Modded Universal player with Spdif out to the dat and it sound great to my ears. Not all CDs win, but the specials ones do, like HDCD, HQ, SHMs, XRCD etc. Also some very well recorded RBCD too. I dont have a problem with local streaming though as I run it from the NAS thru the Memory player which uses IDEAS tech to eliminate as much jitter as it can via memory playback. Again great quality in all formats.

Not sure even that beats those special CDs thru the physical transport, but I need to do deeper evaluation. Streaming over internet falls to 3rd place clearly for me. Eventually, I think I will have memory playback even for Tidal/Qobuz....
 
No Problem Mike. Good points, but innards like the VDRS TECH do matter and are good points to consider as are laser quality, and how the signal is terminated before outputting to the Dac. I have no problem with the TEAC choice you made at all (I quite like it), especially if its the full or partial metal clamp. Even the plastic one sounded good back them and Lucas complaint was the high price for that. However, I see that the price you paid was NOT high, so you really cant go wrong there.
My sense is complex mechanisms like VRDS can break in strange ways. There’s a lot of threads online about random read errors on Esoteric transports. See below for some chatter from owners of even fancy Grandioso transports.

 
I find playback of ripped CDs from a hard drive distinctly inferior to actual CD playback from my CEC TL0. CD ripping involves spinning a CD ROM at high speeds (often 20-30x) that seems to incur a far higher level of read errors requiring much higher Reed Solomon error correction. In the worst case, these are audible clicks when the ripper was unable to correct errors. Playing ripped CDs or SACDs, which I do often, is a convenient solution but it incurs a sonic degradation. As the saying goes, what the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away.

Perhaps the ripper you use is faulty? I have never come across this issue. Do you use AccurateRip?
 
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Amen to that, although I do stream a lot of music as well. Still, there’s a beauty to the presentation of CD box sets that streaming cannot match. Just received hot off the press the latest limited edition 7-CD box set from the incomparable Mosaic Records known for their legendary compilations on vinyl (most now sold out) and CD. This collection features recordings from 1963-1970 of Bobby Hutcherson. Sonics as usual are fabulous. But equally superlative is the stunning 13-page full size liner notes with beautiful black and white photographs. This is a collectible art form for music that sustains the soul for decades. I have several others from them (including the “dry as a martini” Paul Desmond playing in Toronto). You cannot stream these albums, as far as I know.

View attachment 133132

The mosaic box sets are always limited editions. This is how they obtain the rights to issue the sets. It is especially frustrating when some of the session tracks are incomplete - for example the Teddy Wilson 1934-1942 set does not contain any of the Billie Holiday vocal tracks. The sound quality of those tracks that were included is superb, so it's a shame.

The Bill Savory set is also incomplete as the Benny Goodman heirs refused to allow publication of the material (you have to go to the Jazz Museum in Harlem to listen to them).

A few of the sets are available on streaming services (one of the Hodges sets comes to mind), but those are exceptions.


Streaming the music without having the credits must be pretty frustrating! You can get the discographies for some of them on the Mosaic website but not the complete liner notes and artwork.

Most of the sets regularly come up for sale on Discogs and eBay.
 
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Some of his comments come over a little on the funny side, considering his pricing and clients now ! :rolleyes:

"That's why VRDS is used by the worlds finest and most expensive CD players like top level Wadia, Spectral, Esoteric, Tascam, and of course TEAC. (anyway - Esoteric and Tascam are brands of teac company - the former is for filthy rich americans (sort of a Lexus) and the latter is for pro market - radio, broadcasting, studio, recording companies.) and
"

MBL made by people who do not care about cost​

MBL from Berlin is famous for their "telephone number" price tags and good products. TOTALLY TUBE FREE I must add.
Since I am not a German dentist, I have no idea how MBL sounds or even looks. I never will.
People who own MBL are NOT the same people who say to me: Lukas, would you like to lampize my player please ?!?
A person before starting his company complains about high prices and how fool we audiophiles are buying those products. After that, same person starts his own company and alter his speech to how high the manufacturing costs and how reasonable the prices of his products even though they are higher than the ones he’s complaining in the first place. It’s a hypothetical person but very likely to come by.
 
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Perhaps the ripper you use is faulty? I have never come across this issue. Do you use AccurateRip?
When you have a really large CD/SACD collection, like I do, ripping can take a lot of time. I used various rippers and I can’t remember off the top of my head what I used. The sonic quality varies. In some cases, there’s a sound of something scraping that goes “click click click” that sounds like the error correction mechanism is failing. Keep in mind that the original Redbook Reed Solomon error correction protocol was designed precisely to correct errors made by a CD reader running at normal speeds. When you use a modern CD-ROM ripper that can go
up to 40-50x the normal speed, there’s no guarantee at all that all errors will be corrected. You are going beyond the original specs. It might work and mostly does, but it’s also frequently causing sonic degradation. These effects are subtle and you have to listen to direct CD playback. My spouse has far better hearing than I do at my age (biology is not kind to men in their 60s!) and can instantly tell if I’m playing a physical CD or playing a ripped track.

It’s like understanding the difference between a garden variety CD player and a top notch transport like the CEC. You have to train your ears over many years. Not unlike instrument makers who can tell a Stradivarius from a Guarneri or a Steinway from a Bosendorfer. Violin makers go through extraordinary length to cure the wood and experiment with many types of varnishes. Oboe players have to learn how to make their reeds from thin pieces of wood. It takes years of skill to perfect these techniques and a good ear. The same applies to high end audio.
 
When you have a really large CD/SACD collection, like I do, ripping can take a lot of time. I used various rippers and I can’t remember off the top of my head what I used. The sonic quality varies. In some cases, there’s a sound of something scraping that goes “click click click” that sounds like the error correction mechanism is failing. Keep in mind that the original Redbook Reed Solomon error correction protocol was designed precisely to correct errors made by a CD reader running at normal speeds. When you use a modern CD-ROM ripper that can go
up to 40-50x the normal speed, there’s no guarantee at all that all errors will be corrected. You are going beyond the original specs. It might work and mostly does, but it’s also frequently causing sonic degradation. These effects are subtle and you have to listen to direct CD playback. My spouse has far better hearing than I do at my age (biology is not kind to men in their 60s!) and can instantly tell if I’m playing a physical CD or playing a ripped track.

It’s like understanding the difference between a garden variety CD player and a top notch transport like the CEC. You have to train your ears over many years. Not unlike instrument makers who can tell a Stradivarius from a Guarneri or a Steinway from a Bosendorfer. Violin makers go through extraordinary length to cure the wood and experiment with many types of varnishes. Oboe players have to learn how to make their reeds from thin pieces of wood. It takes years of skill to perfect these techniques and a good ear. The same applies to high end audio.

I'll be honest, I'm not convinced by your explanations, but thanks for the reply.
 
When you have a really large CD/SACD collection, like I do, ripping can take a lot of time. I used various rippers and I can’t remember off the top of my head what I used. The sonic quality varies. In some cases, there’s a sound of something scraping that goes “click click click” that sounds like the error correction mechanism is failing. Keep in mind that the original Redbook Reed Solomon error correction protocol was designed precisely to correct errors made by a CD reader running at normal speeds. When you use a modern CD-ROM ripper that can go
up to 40-50x the normal speed, there’s no guarantee at all that all errors will be corrected. You are going beyond the original specs. It might work and mostly does, but it’s also frequently causing sonic degradation. These effects are subtle and you have to listen to direct CD playback. My spouse has far better hearing than I do at my age (biology is not kind to men in their 60s!) and can instantly tell if I’m playing a physical CD or playing a ripped track.

It’s like understanding the difference between a garden variety CD player and a top notch transport like the CEC. You have to train your ears over many years. Not unlike instrument makers who can tell a Stradivarius from a Guarneri or a Steinway from a Bosendorfer. Violin makers go through extraordinary length to cure the wood and experiment with many types of varnishes. Oboe players have to learn how to make their reeds from thin pieces of wood. It takes years of skill to perfect these techniques and a good ear. The same applies to high end audio.
this is how i did it back in the day......50 discs at a time......over a couple month period i ripped about 2500 of my 4000 CD's. i used a 1:1 ripper (dbpower something or other) with error correction. would take 7-8 hours a 50 disc stack as i recall.

i got tired of doing it, and figured i would return to finish the job. but i was off and running with files, and then streaming, and never returned to the job. now i'm buying a transport again. :rolleyes:

i might still have that Kodak beast up in my storage....not sure.
 
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In some cases, there’s a sound of something scraping that goes “click click click” that sounds like the error correction mechanism is failing. Keep in mind that the original Redbook Reed Solomon error correction protocol was designed precisely to correct errors made by a CD reader running at normal speeds. When you use a modern CD-ROM ripper that can go
up to 40-50x the normal speed, there’s no guarantee at all that all errors will be corrected. You are going beyond the original specs. It might work and mostly does, but it’s also frequently causing sonic degradation.
I can understand your desire for convenience, but if I were you, I would re-rip any CD with clicks, using slow speed and error correction. Why tolerate an inferior rip? I have a few CDs that wouldn't play cleanly in a transport but are perfect when ripped. All of my CD rips sound as good or better than the original disc.

My Pioneer USB CD/DVD drive has three modes for ripping. I used Master Mode error correction for any problem CD:
Standard Mode: When it encounters an error that cannot be resolved by CIRC (cross-interleaved Reed–Solomon code error correction system), it interpolates the data and continues
Master Mode: When an error is encountered that CIRC cannot resolve, it changes parameters and re-reads the data several times. If the error is not corrected, it interpolates and continues
Perfect Mode: When an error is encountered that CIRC cannot resolve, it changes parameters and re-reads the data several times. If the error is not corrected, the operation is stopped.
 

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