A $42,000 transport.

KeithR

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Yeap, and proven by the sound - when it comes to high end digital, only spinning will do, at least so far, and a slaved transport goes even further: enter the dCS and many others like it in the past. Two words: jitter and noise. Nothing USB-based can come close to the low noise of the best transports, and we have yet to see how ethernet fares here.

you are avoiding the obvious question - dcs is using an Esoteric transport with no output stage here. what do they do that is worth 42k?
 

Mike Lavigne

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you are avoiding the obvious question - dcs is using an Esoteric transport with no output stage here. what do they do that is worth 42k?

the SACD 'Scarlet Book' requires a proprietary interface when sending SACD sourced code from a transport to a dac....in theory to prevent copying bit for bit.....and each brand has to have their own particular interface method.

so this gives each brand cover to justify their transport as essential to get optimal SACD performance, and they all claim that this advantage extends to redbook too.

it's all smoke and mirrors.....on some levels. yet no doubt there are real performance issues involved too.
 

Mike Lavigne

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Mike, any desire to pick up the MSB transport down the line? Or are you happy with ripped files?

my mind is open to that.

for sure I will at least try one at some point.

MSB feels strongly that discs have a higher ceiling than files. but they don't have an SGM to use. so we will just see how it goes.

and there are no dxd discs, so there is that aspect too.
 
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microstrip

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you are avoiding the obvious question - dcs is using an Esoteric transport with no output stage here. what do they do that is worth 42k?

Apparently yes, according to the crazy people who get it. :)
 

Kingsrule

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Yeap, and proven by the sound - when it comes to high end digital, only spinning will do, at least so far, and a slaved transport goes even further: enter the dCS and many others like it in the past. Two words: jitter and noise. Nothing USB-based can come close to the low noise of the best transports, and we have yet to see how ethernet fares here.

Another arrogant statement out of Boston.."when it comes to high end digital, only spinning will do, at least so far, and a slaved transport goes even further" Really? What is ur experience with files?As far as I can tell, none. But u did get a new shade of Spectral sunglasses so of course spinning is where its at. And of course its definitive!
USB is bandaid technology and I agree it sounds bad. But it started the ball away from spinning and on to something much better. Some of us, not the arrogants, are using ethernet as the endpoint and its the way to go. Doesn't ur associate use it on his Upsampler?
 

ack

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Ack,
Thanks. Where do you believe jitter and noise are introduced?

In short, it can happen anywhere and everywhere, and noise starts at the power supply, is inherent in any clock, and one can safely assume there are many clocks along a digital chain (transports, servers, DACs). There's jitter, aka timing errors, and noise-induced jitter. The more buffering stages there are, the higher the probability of jitter and noise, and the likelihood of more clocks ticking. For example, starting with the CD ROM drive, it usually has its own clock, and for contrast, the Spectral 4000SL's CD ROM drive is custom-made (as is the 4000SV's) to do away with that clock and be slaved - here's some relevant language:

The UltraDrive has been engineered and tested to be clocked by an external oscillator, it has no clock reference of its own. Spectral engineers then clock directly from the DAC master clock for the highest possible timing accuracy. Slaving the optical drive directly from the DAC clock is acknowledged as the most precise method possible to control data output

A DAC's PLL at the input can have its own clock, independent of the D/A conversion's. etc. etc. A clock - any clock - can be, and usually is, a source of noise... you get the point...

So to do it all right, it requires extreme skills, be it a transport or a server or a DAC - just look at the Baetis Reference 2 details, where they claim an internal digital cable makes a huge difference. Excerpts from http://baetisaudio.com/Baetis_Reference_II.php:

We replaced our hand-made internal copper digital wiring with pure silver (cryogenically treated) wiring, double-shielded, made for us by Revelation™ Audio Labs. These new cables connect the MB to our daughter-board, and then the daughter-board to our rear digital signal outputs (AES/EBU and BNC-SPDIF) – the result is significantly improved performance of our daughter-board for 2-channel audio

And even an internal DC cable:

We were very skeptical at first, but when Revelation™ Audio suggested we use their cryo-treated silver cable for a DC cable (from our PSU to the Neutrik connector for DC on the rear of the server), we gave it an audition. "Wow" is all we can say.

Next, when one asks, what's the jitter specification for a digital component, the proper answer is: where do you wanna measure it - it should be obvious by now that jitter can exist anywhere along a digital chain.

Regarding USB, there is very good reason why there exist USB-to-AES/EBU bridges, and that's to isolate noise and potentially reclock with higher accuracy; but they are all band-aids, no matter how good they are. The Baetis, instead, sports a custom motherboard with AES/EBU directly out of it. It still has ways to go to be slaved to a DAC, and although USB is a natural candidate for slaving a server, it is extremely noisy as an interface.

So we hope ethernet will prove to be as good as the best transports. Meanwhile, personally, I have no problem with the dCS transport's price, assuming they go to the extremes that I think are necessary to transfer digital data the best possible way.
 

Fiddle Faddle

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The Asia market is very high end and it's primarily silver discs

And with classical music too, the market for both CD and SACD remains extremely solid. The classical SACD market in particular seems to be at least as robust as it was a decade ago or more. Infact the classical market for SACD is so strong today that in hindsight I might try to argue I'd have been better off going down the SACD route 9 years ago instead of the "classical audiophile vinyl" route.

I suspect the Vivaldi SACD transport will be the most popular with classical enthusiasts, though I certainly agree it will enjoy significant penetration in the Asian markets regardless - where indeed they love their silver disks.
 

Mike Lavigne

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Do you guys think it sounds better than ripping disks to a drive? Or different?

Better, significantly better. But here we have a problem - owners will have experience, but some people will also consider that they have owner bias ... Speculation is much funnier ...

BTW, I did not order the transport when I ordered the Vivaldi - I was thinking about keeping the Metronome Calypso Reference. But after listening to the transport for a few weeks I understood it was part of the package.

my 30,000 foot view of transport/discs verses files (ignoring the higher resolution of files issue) is one of a mature platform with transports verses a still relatively young platform with servers and files. the VRDS-NEO is the culmination of 30+ years of transport evolution with billions made.

OTOH making the absolutely perfect music server and then delivering it to a dac, is maybe 6-7-10 years old at a high level. sure there were CPU's and files before that but no serious efforts. now we have a number of them sprouting up everywhere along with software too so this is a rapidly developing situation.

I cannot imagine that files won't overtake discs in ultimate performance simply because no one is building new transports better than what we have.

and I think that the SGM is likely better than any discs right now, but have not done enough investigation to know that. it's just my intuition.

I had the Aqua La Diva transport with my Aqua Formula dac and it sounded great. to begin with it was neck and neck with the SGM on redbook files, once I placed it on top of the Formula which was sitting on the Herzan TS-150. although the SGM was not on a Herzan. then I got some upgrades to the HQ Player and Roon and the SGM moved clearly ahead of the discs. now we have the Select II and all that entails.

and we still have not placed the SGM on a Herzan. so it's inevitable that files should be better. how soon? what cost? if the best transports are $40k then you can get quite a server. servers and software are only going to improve.

no one is pushing discs to get better.

but ultimately our generation of users are tied to our media. so for now that is the big deal and varies according to the market we are talking about.
 

asiufy

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audiophile-approved to me and all of my local friends including some reviewers.

A regular computer? Nah... Not in 2017.

With a good NAS and a good DAC, you won't need a computer or a server, just a network.

And if you must have a server, it shouldn't be a regular computer, but a purpose-built one.
 

KeithR

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A regular computer? Nah... Not in 2017.

With a good NAS and a good DAC, you won't need a computer or a server, just a network.

And if you must have a server, it shouldn't be a regular computer, but a purpose-built one.

he has both - a Vivaldi DAC and Synology NAS
 

microstrip

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my 30,000 foot view of transport/discs verses files (ignoring the higher resolution of files issue) is one of a mature platform with transports verses a still relatively young platform with servers and files. the VRDS-NEO is the culmination of 30+ years of transport evolution with billions made.

OTOH making the absolutely perfect music server and then delivering it to a dac, is maybe 6-7-10 years old at a high level. sure there were CPU's and files before that but no serious efforts. now we have a number of them sprouting up everywhere along with software too so this is a rapidly developing situation. (...)

You highlighted two points that I have considered with some care in the past. I had found in the past that in order to maximize performance I had to use matched transport and DACs (Ben Duncan Audio Syntheys, Forsell, Metronome) or integrated players (Krell KPS25 or Audio Research players). Although no one can exactly explain the why's after 30 years an excellent transport with a matching DAC still go on giving me the best of digital.

Concerning the youth (or childhood) of digital servers, my limited experience has shown me that until now music servers do not manage to extract the best of a DAC. All devices, including digital devices, have sound signatures - IMHO there is not such thing as neutral - created and modified also by their interaction with other devices. There is still a lot to learn and develop concerning digital. But I cannot see why someone has not designed a kind of buffer with two Ethernet plugs that completely isolates the bits entering the DAC from the server ... A pure Ethernet microRendu ...
 

Tango

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This is the inside mechanism of JMF 3.7 transport.

IMG_2931.JPG

Although the price is not as high as $42,000, it is still among those right up there. Because of its nature of plug and play and there are so many big pocket cd listeners out there with huge catalog of cds, very expensive transport will keep coming out. Buyers are not only from Asia but also the rest of the world. My friends in Europe and Eastern Europe also use very expensive transport.

Pls, check out this quote:

"I have been experimenting with the QUAD USB module while using the microRendu as a Roon endpoint, HQPlayer NAA and DLNA mode. My initial impressions of the Select II was running the microRendu as a Roon Endpoint. I am now leaning HEAVILY to using my high end computer i7 6700k to run HQPlayer with NO filters or dithering and the microRendu as an HQPlayer NAA. Been doing this for the last day and close to declaring it the winner by a significant margin which IMHO speaks well for the current direction Mike is taking with the SGM."

The above quote is written by Priaptor, taken from one of MikeL's thread. With all do respect, this level of English is way beyond me. And Pardon my ignorance, I dont understand a thing that Mr. Priaptor said. So, at least for me, using a cd transport is as convenient as playing my tape or vinyl.

Why buy so expensive? The answer is just like buying other expensive audio gears. Because they fit the listener behavior, sound better and not unobtainnum.

Kind regards,
Tang
 

awsmone

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PeterA

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Another arrogant statement out of Boston.."when it comes to high end digital, only spinning will do, at least so far, and a slaved transport goes even further" Really? What is ur experience with files?As far as I can tell, none. But u did get a new shade of Spectral sunglasses so of course spinning is where its at. And of course its definitive!
USB is bandaid technology and I agree it sounds bad. But it started the ball away from spinning and on to something much better. Some of us, not the arrogants, are using ethernet as the endpoint and its the way to go. Doesn't ur associate use it on his Upsampler?

Kingsrule, please send me a private message with evidence of your claim, otherwise it is a gross generalization. Ack, Al M., Madfloyd and I have four very different systems and approaches toward audio. Our opinions differ, though we enjoy a similar reference and each other's company.
 

XV-1

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May 24, 2010
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How does this get to US 42k?

To buy retail in the UK ex VAT 22.5k pounds.

seems the US distributor, which is DCS is making all the $$. This is the sad state of high end audio.
 

Al M.

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Kingsrule, please send me a private message with evidence of your claim, otherwise it is a gross generalization. Ack, Al M., Madfloyd and I have four very different systems and approaches toward audio. Our opinions differ, though we enjoy a similar reference and each other's company.

Aah, at one point Kingsrule has even suggested to me that I should leave the country.

It's all good fun, I guess. Nothing to be taken too seriously ;)
 

Mike Lavigne

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How does this get to US 42k?

To buy retail in the UK ex VAT 22.5k pounds.

seems the US distributor, which is DCS is making all the $$. This is the sad state of high end audio.

with Brexit are UK goods 'list prices' in UK pounds relevant for other markets? isn't that all over the board right now.

I'm not suggesting that $42k for a list price for a Transport is not obscene, but only that I've seen other UK audio products appear to be great buys with the politics lately.

normally high end manufacturers are careful to not allow price differences to get too large from currency fluctuations. maybe Brexit gives them cover to sell for less in the UK temporarily.
 

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