Thinking of adding a dedicated CD Transport for spinning CDs to my setup, pondering some things beforehand…may make or break my decision to get one.
The CD Transport (Audiolab 6000CDT) has a very good clock sitting before the coaxial digital output.
Will the clock quality of the transport (over coax) into the Directstream make any difference, even in comparison to different Transports, given that the DS Dac ignores the incoming clock?
Currently use an Oppo 203 over i2s into the Dac, and wondering if the clock “thing” makes getting a different Transport worth it.
CAN different transports can sound different into the DS Dac, given the “throw the clock away” nature of it?
Good transport over co-ax Vs my Oppo over i2s?
Is it a case that quality wise, is the coax input particularly worse than i2s?
The main transfer of noise comes from conducted electrical noise, not jitter. The clock doesn’t matter much with the DS, things like groundloops, etc. matter much more. Still someone that takes care with the clock probably takes care with other things too. Different transports will likely sound different, but it’s more the care with grounding and the quality of the cable than the quality of the clock. For that matter different transports will likely change the sound of your system even if they aren’t connected to the DAC because of care in the power supply, etc.
Wasn’t quite sure of the DSS’s relative “resistance to clock” benefit with i2s compared to coax.
Happy to know the DS is a leveller and (as it should all things being equal) depend on the quality of the source.
Happy to know Ive a good power cable and digital coax to use with a Transport.
As always, will use my ears.
Question answered.
Appreciate you taking time out to answer Ted.
Yep, for all digital inputs the clock rate is discovered the same way in the FPGA. The edges are never looked at so there is little sensitivity to jitter, but instead there’s a fast sampling clock (approx 170MHz) and after sampling the FPGA looks for patterns in the data and clocks to discover the bits in the samples and the overall approximate rate.
