Is there a Michael Fremer of CD transports? If no, DEAR GOD PLEASE SEND US ONE!!!!

[caesar]

caesar,

I'm sure you're able to write ONE POST without mentioning Harley, Valin, etc. I just haven't seen one yet, but I'm sure you're capable...


cheers,
alex

If we want to make this hobby better, we must call out the guys who make our lives difficult. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. When you shopping for a $20K plus DAC or a $100K+ speakers, it's not that much to ask a guy like harley to do a comparison to save you some time to help narrow down the products to audition. "Screw the fan" culture on the part of the media writers will never go away otherwise.

 

[caesar]

Cesar, great great post.
Made me smile a lot.
You don’t have to convince me.
I remain v happy I found a cdp 5 years ago that holds its head up well against my tt.
I never regret using it.
I never get to the point that I decide to go streaming as well.
Why would I? My cdp and tt truly excel.

Thank you! Enjoy!

 

[spiritofmusic]

Alex is right about passion/emotion, and cold light of day decision making.
Or the lack of it.
I know he’s in effect criticising decisions not to embrace streaming.
And he’s right in many ways
I still find that having a really compelling tt and cdp, I just can’t find an irresistible urge to move to streaming.

 

[Empirical Audio]

It's amazing to me to read these posts. CD transports are more analog than computer audio etc...

When it comes to a transport, I don't care if its a Sonos, a CD transport or an Aurender N10 server, the sound quality is dependent on only one thing, Jitter.

You can easily spend $10K on any of these to get low jitter. You can also use an older CD transport that has more jitter, but it sounds more melodic because of the jitter spectrum. It will never deliver the imaging, dynamics and focus of an expensive new transport however, at least not by itself.

Jitter comes in many forms. It can actually take one down the garden path because it sometimes creates an artificial "echo" or "ambiance". It can also make the music sound very electronic.

Low jitter will result in better imaging and more detail, even pinpoint imaging if you room is set up well. These attributes are not mutually exclusive with an analog smooth sound. It's all a matter of what the jitter looks like over time and frequency. A single jitter number is not very useful IME because jitter is a complex effect. This is why I always do a plot of directly measured jitter. Directly measured means that no DAC is involved. This is the ONLY way to accurately measure jitter of any transport or server. No reviewer does this to my knowledge. No other company does this either.

Here is a jitter plot of an Oppo transport before and after my Synchro-Mesh reclocker is added in the S/PDIF cable:

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=154408.0

Here are some jitter plots showing the difference between different 1.25-1.5m coax cables, including spectrum, driven from my Synchro-Mesh reclocker:

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=154425.0

As you can see, even what you thought was a decent cable of 4 feet in length can add significantly to the jitter of the "system".

This is why it is so important to optimize the jitter from ANY source, CD Transport or server. The good news is that even old transports can sound both analog and detailed if a reclocker and decent coax cables are added.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

 

[microstrip]

If we want to make this hobby better, we must call out the guys who make our lives difficult. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. When you shopping for a $20K plus DAC or a $100K+ speakers, it's not that much to ask a guy like harley to do a comparison to save you some time to help narrow down the products to audition. "Screw the fan" culture on the part of the media writers will never go away otherwise.

In this forum we are free to express divergent opinions and go against opinions and posts of other members - it is part of WBF - but the message has always been "debate the message, not the messenger". I am sure that if you insulted and nicknamed any of our members moderators would not allow it.

Apologies to be so direct, but IMHO your systematic insult to known reviewers, that have done more for this hobby than most of us, only hampers the growth and acknowledgement of WBF in the audio community. There was a time we had reviewers in WBF, even from TAS. I doubt that any one from TAS would feel comfortable participating in a forum where members are free to insult their colleagues.

 

[Al M.]

Amen! Yet there are different kinds of passion. There's passion, and there's PASSION! Breaking passion down a bit, there are majority of audiophiles who have been hearing about the "wonders of computer audio" in the last 5-10 years. And as we all know, unfortunately, audiophiles are frequently unhappy with their sound and also are not self-confident enough in their ability to pick out gear....

In moments of confusion, people look to friends, experts, and check out what the majority is doing. So they talk to their friends and search the web for amateur and professional reviews, and any type of product feedback. The frequent go to point is the computer audiophile site. But the guy who runs it, I'm sure, knows a ton about computers and audio sounds, but judges every DAC, cable, and component by how much detail (and frequently very analytical detail!) it let's through - instead of how the gear conveys tone, dynamics, and human emotions. No wonder the geek thinks Berk Ref is the best DAC in the world, while the majority would much prefer the $2K Chord Hugo to the Berk DAC.

So our gullible audiophile friend, still confused as hell, reaches to an "expert", "worthless to the fans" robert harley. This guy has worked really hard to earn his nickname! He had the Wilson Alexandria 2 and Magico q7 in the same room and never compared them. Ditto for dCS vivaldi and berkeley ref.

In his reviews, he called the latter products the "best" (to help the confused, gullible audiophiles make the decision). And in his reviews he used a bunch of meaningless audiophile words, like "cleanest bass", "pinpoint imaging", "large soundstage", etc. In reality, of course, those components are not BEST, but just appeal to his analytical tastes.

How's worthless harley any different than the famous self-loathing audiophile, Ethan Winer, writing about a $10 CD player that he found in a garbage dumpster, yet that measures perfectly? To Winer, that $10 cd player will do all the things perfectly: soundstage, imaging, bass, etc. Without gear comparisons, worthless harley just elevates his favorite products over dozens of others that are not praised as much, or at all, which gives his favorite products an advantage in the marketplace... And as far as digital audio goes, Harley hates the sound of CD transports because they have less detail than the computer audio stuff he likes ...

So our audiophile friend who lacks PASSION and curiosity doesn't even try a 10 year old reference Esoteric CD transport that will beat the crap out of the lumins, aurinders, naims, etc., and continues the cycle of unhappiness...

By the way, I have nothing against streaming! Tidal is great. Some high res files are great (but you never know what you will get). And vinyl ripped to 192/24 high res is my favorite format at this point.

But ripping CDs instead of playing CDs without a CD transport is a travesty for many who would trade more humanness and emotion for detail retrieval.

Interesting post with some thought-provoking opinions.

A few corrections/observations:

1. Both Computer Audiophile (Chris Connaker) and Robert Harley find the $ 2,300 Schiit Yggdrasil DAC comparable in quality to the Berkeley Ref DAC, Harley even finds it comparable to the dCS Vivaldi. I have yet to see anybody claim that the Yggdrasil sounds 'analytical' (not that I personally find those other two DACs 'analytical' either).

2. Computer Audiophile does write about tone, and he highlighted the tone of the Yggdrasil DAC as a great positive.

3. I have yet to hear a computer audio system that beats my CD transport on detail. Quite possibly there is computer audio that beats any transport on performance, but I haven't heard it thus far.

4. Extrapolating from my experience so far I agree with you that there is probably a lot of crappy computer audio out there which is easily bettered by great a CD transport like mine, 'hi-res' be damned. I may be wrong about this of course, but I rate my chances to be right as more than good. Again, this is not at all to claim that computer audio cannot possibly be stellar.

 

[Al M.]

In this forum we are free to express divergent opinions and go against opinions and posts of other members - it is part of WBF - but the message has always been "debate the message, not the messenger". I am sure that if you insulted and nicknamed any of our members moderators would not allow it.

Apologies to be so direct, but IMHO your systematic insult to known reviewers, that have done more for this hobby than most of us, only hampers the growth and acknowledgement of WBF in the audio community. There was a time we had reviewers in WBF, even from TAS. I doubt that any one from TAS would feel comfortable participating in a forum where members are free to insult their colleagues.

I just posted some corrections about reviewers in order to set the record straight to some extent.

 

[asiufy]

Alex is right about passion/emotion, and cold light of day decision making.
Or the lack of it.
I know he’s in effect criticising decisions not to embrace streaming.
And he’s right in many ways
I still find that having a really compelling tt and cdp, I just can’t find an irresistible urge to move to streaming.

Marc,

It's not a criticism, but more of a realization that you can't argue with passion. Again, you can't love/have passion for what you don't know.
A lot of stuff that audiophiles do, on a purely rational level, makes no sense at all (just ask most signficant others, or friends and relatives). And yet we all do, and enjoy it all.

 

[Ki Choi]

The same data comes out of a $200 and a $200K transport. The only difference is jitter and how well the output circuit is designed and implemented. Most do not have 75 ohms output impedance and most don't generate a .5V P-P waveform.

Hi Steve

Would you recommend low cost CD/DVD player or transport that your Synchro-Mesh would work the best with?

I've always thought the ML 37.5 was one of the best CD transports ever made but it's up there in price wise even today.

Thanks,
Ki

 

[Empirical Audio]

Hi Steve

Would you recommend low cost CD/DVD player or transport that your Synchro-Mesh would work the best with?

I've always thought the ML 37.5 was one of the best CD transports ever made but it's up there in price wise even today.

Thanks,
Ki

I recommend an Oppo transport, any of the models will work fine. You may get a slight improvement with a lower-jitter transport, but I would not spend big bux on it. If you like the looks and durability of the ML, go for it.

I did some tests with different cables and inputs to the Synchro-Mesh and it is not 100% jitter immune, but the measured differences are many MHz above the audible range. Jitter of different sources can slightly affect the highest audio frequencies, but it's subtle:

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=154918.0

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

 

[GSOphile]

If the transport in an old pre-owned 37.5 goes bad, repairability may be challenging. I'd be inclined toward the Oppo.

 

[sbo6]

When it comes to a transport, I don't care if its a Sonos, a CD transport or an Aurender N10 server, the sound quality is dependent on only one thing, Jitter.

What about noise and quality of PSU(s)?

 

[Empirical Audio]

What about noise and quality of PSU(s)?

Only if it affects the jitter from the transport or server, which it usually does. It's only about jitter.

Another thing that can affect the signal integrity is the ground-loop between the transport and DAC. This is not transport specific, but more to do with the AC power system. If the DAC has pulse transformer on the S/PDIF input, this alleviates the issue. If you use a Synchro-Mesh reclocker, it is isolated on input and output.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

 

[Pb Blimp]

When it comes to a transport, I don't care if its a Sonos, a CD transport or an Aurender N10 server, the sound quality is dependent on only one thing, Jitter.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

What about noise and quality of PSU(s)?

Only if it affects the jitter from the transport or server, which it usually does. It's only about jitter.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

But in the digital world this is kinda like saying "the only thing that affects the sound quality is the thing that effects the sound quality." Of course jitter is the SQ determinate in the digital domain, but lots of things affect jitter (electromagnetic interference, cross talk, ground and power integrity, inductance, capacitance, to name a few) which all need to be optimized. Isn't that really the point of the discussion: how different implementations in the digital domain succeed at this challenge?

 

[Empirical Audio]

But in the digital world this is kinda like saying "the only thing that affects the sound quality is the thing that effects the sound quality." Of course jitter is the SQ determinate in the digital domain, but lots of things affect jitter (electromagnetic interference, cross talk, ground and power integrity, inductance, capacitance, to name a few) which all need to be optimized. Isn't that really the point of the discussion: how different implementations in the digital domain succeed at this challenge?

No, this is different. It's not just something that can be improved with better power supply or better clock in the Transport.

The difference is that this can be solved in the cable AFTER the transport or server. That is the difference. That means that literally ANY device can be used as a transport, cheap or expensive, computer or CD spinner and the final result can be the same if a reclocker like Synchro-Mesh and good cabling is used. And furthermore, I would argue that it's a LOT cheaper way to get to extremely low jitter and you get galvanic isolation as well, so no ground-loops.

You cannot for instance do this between a DAC and a preamp or amp. There is nothing you can do to the analog signal to recover the magic there once it is lost. It's just gone. This is why one needs to spend bux on a good DAC, for the analog output. In that case the power supply and power delivery, I/V conversion, digital filter and other aspects are important.

This technique also works for HT with Dolby Digital and DTS to a SS processor. Just use an iFi SPDIF purifier to reduce jitter. I can recommend this for HT.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

 

[caesar]

In this forum we are free to express divergent opinions and go against opinions and posts of other members - it is part of WBF - but the message has always been "debate the message, not the messenger". I am sure that if you insulted and nicknamed any of our members moderators would not allow it.

Apologies to be so direct, but IMHO your systematic insult to known reviewers, that have done more for this hobby than most of us, only hampers the growth and acknowledgement of WBF in the audio community. There was a time we had reviewers in WBF, even from TAS. I doubt that any one from TAS would feel comfortable participating in a forum where members are free to insult their colleagues.

Hi Microstip,
Yes I agree that we want experienced individuals and reviewers who positively contribute to enjoyment of this hobby. But we don't want just everyone . I haven't seen Ethan winer here, and I'm sure no one is complaining!

You want people that are not only knowledgeable, but also have respect for other members as human beings. The best way to tell that, of course, is to observe how they treat other human beings. If a guy disrespects the fans and his readers, misleads, greatly exaggerates, engages in ethically shady behavior by failing to identify obvious flaws (until the version is reviewed), trashes the competition as sounding colored compared to his favorite brand, makes fans travel to a different state, country, or continent to hear a comparison you have sitting in your listening room, do you really want him?!? So we want knowledgeable members, members who want share experiences, and who respect each other as human beings. Guys' nicknames reflect that...


The only 2 reviewers I remember on this site are "mellifluous" Myles B Astor phd and "Great" Peter Breuninger. I am busy and don't read all the threads , but I try to stay up on only for high end , reference products I'm interested in, and I don't know many of the guys. so there may have been other minor reviewers on the site that I am not aware of . Let's go through some of the guys:

"Mellifluous " Myles earned his nickname for a lot vinyl threads and fighting against audiophile re-education camps some were recommending. (What happened to a guy named pheloniois ponk? Didn't agree with him or share his frequently analytical taste, but he had a diverse perspective )

"Great" peter breuninger is harry Pearson's heir apparent, as his taste matches HP's closer than any living reviewer in the business today.

And "fearless" fremer earned his nickname and integrity for calling things in his writing as they really are, with little BS.

And Too bad ken Kessler doesn't post here! Another guy who gets it

So those who positively contribute are recognized!

Now fremer has his own site and he is busy posting there. And Mellifluous Myles and Great peter have their own sites, as I understand. So why would they compete with themselves and post here?

As for valin, I'm not sure how he got into this thread. He's a flawed genius. Yet because of his taste and preferences for the lean, clean, frequently analytical gear that he calls "transparency to source", its kind of like Michael Jordan choosing to play baseball instead of basketball. He as well may be dead dead to most fans. That is Too bad for the vast majority of us that don't share his tastes and preferences. Not sure he got into a digital thread, non-Magico thread, but I'm sure he will reappear when we discuss the next Magico model. But, again, why is it in valin's interest to contribute to any site other than the tas site and divert eyeballs/ advertising revenue from there?

As for Harley, again, he doesn't even contribute to the forums on the tas site. Last time I checked , and this was several years ago, those forums were deader than disco. So why would he post there? And, furthermore, what positive value does he add to the fans? In a time when there are so few dealers and fans have to travel to different Continents! to audition gear, this guy spits in the face of the fans and doesn't compare gear he has sitting in his room. So fans have to waste their precious time and money to travel to hear stuff they are not interested in. They have to go through the trouble to bring in gear into their home, instead of watching their kids smile or doing a million other productive and enjoyable things. And as they bring in gear ito their system, one has to disconnect, reconnect, risk banging stuff up, wait 24-36 hours to settle in- only to discover Harley has no fukkin clue. Harley's legacy is creating the fukk the fan audio culture. What would he contribute here? The conclusion to every piece of his writing is "this is a flawless piece of gear. It is the best because I LIKE IT." Same pattern all the time. I quit reading him a long time ago.

Fukk him! That product he loves is flawless only because he didn't do his job as seek a cohort of gear to compare it to. It is best because he likes the analytical sound and wants his friends to do well, so they can increase their revenues and make more gear with that same sonic signature. Let's not forget that the market resoundingly rejected the Q series after he claimed it was the greatest speaker of all time. Amazing Tom Martin, tas owner , lets him keep his job. Obviously, in his own mind , Harley had achieved great prominence, but he fails to realize that he treats the fans in a abusive, demeaning and arrogant manner. not only has he failed to help his readers achieve better systems THEY would enjoy, he has also wasted a lot of their time and money, and potentially made their systems worse.

In real life, measure of success is different: trying to teach my kids that their level of individual prominence matters less than how many customers' lives they help to make better and how many people they help grow to be better people.

 

[caesar]

It's amazing to me to read these posts. CD transports are more analog than computer audio etc...

When it comes to a transport, I don't care if its a Sonos, a CD transport or an Aurender N10 server, the sound quality is dependent on only one thing, Jitter.

You can easily spend $10K on any of these to get low jitter. You can also use an older CD transport that has more jitter, but it sounds more melodic because of the jitter spectrum. It will never deliver the imaging, dynamics and focus of an expensive new transport however, at least not by itself.

Jitter comes in many forms. It can actually take one down the garden path because it sometimes creates an artificial "echo" or "ambiance". It can also make the music sound very electronic.

Low jitter will result in better imaging and more detail, even pinpoint imaging if you room is set up well. These attributes are not mutually exclusive with an analog smooth sound. It's all a matter of what the jitter looks like over time and frequency. A single jitter number is not very useful IME because jitter is a complex effect. This is why I always do a plot of directly measured jitter. Directly measured means that no DAC is involved. This is the ONLY way to accurately measure jitter of any transport or server. No reviewer does this to my knowledge. No other company does this either.

Here is a jitter plot of an Oppo transport before and after my Synchro-Mesh reclocker is added in the S/PDIF cable:

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=154408.0

Here are some jitter plots showing the difference between different 1.25-1.5m coax cables, including spectrum, driven from my Synchro-Mesh reclocker:

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=154425.0

As you can see, even what you thought was a decent cable of 4 feet in length can add significantly to the jitter of the "system".

This is why it is so important to optimize the jitter from ANY source, CD Transport or server. The good news is that even old transports can sound both analog and detailed if a reclocker and decent coax cables are added.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Great stuff! Thank you!
Since a lot of this technical stuff is way over my head and I don't have the time to dive into understanding it, what can manufacturers do to match up their transport to their DAC? How does dcs modify a top level esoteric transport to mesh with their DAC and clock?

And what exactly is Chord doing, from my quote above?

("...The mathematical operations are most commonly performed within the DAC chip but some companies, like Chord, use an FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) as this allows the DSP engineer almost unlimited flexibility in creating filters. Unless you want to keep increasing the number of filter coefficients, which Watts finds always gives a sonic improvement. The DAVE, for example, uses a Xilinx FPGA that allows a filter with 164,000 coefficients to be programmed. But even 164,000 taps was not enough for Watts, and the availability of a new Xilinx FPGA, the X7A200T, which has no fewer than 740 DSP cores, 215,360 logic cells, and 16MB of memory, allowed him to increase the number of taps to one million—actually 1,015,808!

So why is the filter in the Blu Mk.2 rather than the DAVE, I asked. "The FPGA draws up to 10A of current," Watts replied, "and DAVE's power supply just can't supply that much current without compromising the noise floor." The Blu can, he explained, so it made sense to put the filter in the Mk.2 version of the transport and feed the filtered data stream to DAVE....")


Thank you

 

[BlueFox]

Hi Microstip,
Yes I agree that we want experienced individuals and reviewers who positively contribute to enjoyment of this hobby. But we don't want just everyone . I haven't seen Ethan winer here, and I'm sure no one is complaining!

You want people that are not only knowledgeable, but also have respect for other members as human beings. The best way to tell that, of course, is to observe how they treat other human beings. If a guy disrespects the fans and his readers, misleads, greatly exaggerates, engages in ethically shady behavior by failing to identify obvious flaws (until the version is reviewed), trashes the competition as sounding colored compared to his favorite brand, makes fans travel to a different state, country, or continent to hear a comparison you have sitting in your listening room, do you really want him?!? So we want knowledgeable members, members who want share experiences, and who respect each other as human beings. Guys' nicknames reflect that...


The only 2 reviewers I remember on this site are "mellifluous" Myles B Astor phd and "Great" Peter Breuninger. I am busy and don't read all the threads , but I try to stay up on only for high end , reference products I'm interested in, and I don't know many of the guys. so there may have been other minor reviewers on the site that I am not aware of . Let's go through some of the guys:

"Mellifluous " Myles earned his nickname for a lot vinyl threads and fighting against audiophile re-education camps some were recommending. (What happened to a guy named pheloniois ponk? Didn't agree with him or share his frequently analytical taste, but he had a diverse perspective )

"Great" peter breuninger is harry Pearson's heir apparent, as his taste matches HP's closer than any living reviewer in the business today.

And "fearless" fremer earned his nickname and integrity for calling things in his writing as they really are, with little BS.

And Too bad ken Kessler doesn't post here! Another guy who gets it

So those who positively contribute are recognized!

Now fremer has his own site and he is busy posting there. And Mellifluous Myles and Great peter have their own sites, as I understand. So why would they compete with themselves and post here?

As for valin, I'm not sure how he got into this thread. He's a flawed genius. Yet because of his taste and preferences for the lean, clean, frequently analytical gear that he calls "transparency to source", its kind of like Michael Jordan choosing to play baseball instead of basketball. He as well may be dead dead to most fans. That is Too bad for the vast majority of us that don't share his tastes and preferences. Not sure he got into a digital thread, non-Magico thread, but I'm sure he will reappear when we discuss the next Magico model. But, again, why is it in valin's interest to contribute to any site other than the tas site and divert eyeballs/ advertising revenue from there?

As for Harley, again, he doesn't even contribute to the forums on the tas site. Last time I checked , and this was several years ago, those forums were deader than disco. So why would he post there? And, furthermore, what positive value does he add to the fans? In a time when there are so few dealers and fans have to travel to different Continents! to audition gear, this guy spits in the face of the fans and doesn't compare gear he has sitting in his room. So fans have to waste their precious time and money to travel to hear stuff they are not interested in. They have to go through the trouble to bring in gear into their home, instead of watching their kids smile or doing a million other productive and enjoyable things. And as they bring in gear ito their system, one has to disconnect, reconnect, risk banging stuff up, wait 24-36 hours to settle in- only to discover Harley has no fukkin clue. Harley's legacy is creating the fukk the fan audio culture. What would he contribute here? The conclusion to every piece of his writing is "this is a flawless piece of gear. It is the best because I LIKE IT." Same pattern all the time. I quit reading him a long time ago.

Fukk him! That product he loves is flawless only because he didn't do his job as seek a cohort of gear to compare it to. It is best because he likes the analytical sound and wants his friends to do well, so they can increase their revenues and make more gear with that same sonic signature. Let's not forget that the market resoundingly rejected the Q series after he claimed it was the greatest speaker of all time. Amazing Tom Martin, tas owner , lets him keep his job. Obviously, in his own mind , Harley had achieved great prominence, but he fails to realize that he treats the fans in a abusive, demeaning and arrogant manner. not only has he failed to help his readers achieve better systems THEY would enjoy, he has also wasted a lot of their time and money, and potentially made their systems worse.

In real life, measure of success is different: trying to teach my kids that their level of individual prominence matters less than how many customers' lives they help to make better and how many people they help grow to be better people.

Saving.

 

[sbo6]

In this forum we are free to express divergent opinions and go against opinions and posts of other members - it is part of WBF - but the message has always been "debate the message, not the messenger". I am sure that if you insulted and nicknamed any of our members moderators would not allow it.

Apologies to be so direct, but IMHO your systematic insult to known reviewers, that have done more for this hobby than most of us, only hampers the growth and acknowledgement of WBF in the audio community. There was a time we had reviewers in WBF, even from TAS. I doubt that any one from TAS would feel comfortable participating in a forum where members are free to insult their colleagues.

The message comes from who? The messenger - they are intertwined. I think what you mean is - don't make it personal.
WRT reviewers on WBF or any forum - Their lack of participation is more their loss than WBF members. My recollection of the Breuner incident that lead to his self - imposed exit was the exposure of his conceit and arrogance.

In terms of reviews I find those that offer no baseline of comparison hold little weight. Most are of the "this sounds fantastic" sprinkled with colorful adjectives and analogies. Compared to what? Reviewers commonly have a plethora of amps, sources and speakers, if no comparison is made (and not just by memory), there's no point of reference and their credibility and reviews should be taken with a 1/2 lb of salt..

 

[Pb Blimp]

No, this is different. It's not just something that can be improved with better power supply or better clock in the Transport.

The difference is that this can be solved in the cable AFTER the transport or server. That is the difference. That means that literally ANY device can be used as a transport, cheap or expensive, computer or CD spinner and the final result can be the same if a reclocker like Synchro-Mesh and good cabling is used. And furthermore, I would argue that it's a LOT cheaper way to get to extremely low jitter and you get galvanic isolation as well, so no ground-loops.

You cannot for instance do this between a DAC and a preamp or amp. There is nothing you can do to the analog signal to recover the magic there once it is lost. It's just gone. This is why one needs to spend bux on a good DAC, for the analog output. In that case the power supply and power delivery, I/V conversion, digital filter and other aspects are important.

This technique also works for HT with Dolby Digital and DTS to a SS processor. Just use an iFi SPDIF purifier to reduce jitter. I can recommend this for HT.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Yes, of course, we understand how your product works. The point is jitter is caused by a multitude of things. Many feel the optimization of those things is superior to a simple reclocking step like the one you sell. I think that's what people are talking about here.