I bought a PST to replace my ancient PS Audio Lambda transport last year. Its mated with my DIY PCM1702 JTDAC via SPDIF coax.
I always like the Lambda/JT DAC combo. When I got tired of doing surgery on the draw mechanism…I tried an Oppo 205 and a Marantz DV9600 as transports. I really didnt like either combo for redbook CD as I thought they sounded bad.
With the PST, I am amazed on how great the combo is now…magnitudes better than the Lambda.
I was hoping Ted and others can enlighten me on why this sounds magical.
I cant afford a DS DAC right now so Im going to listen to my large CD collection(which before the PST I essentially stopped listening to and mostly played LP’s on my SOTA Cosmos)
Now my digital frontend is great so Im offloading lots of hours on my cartridge and Im happy about it
Besides galvanic isolation what makes this sound magical??? Power supply, clocking, etc ??? Please help me out. One of the best purchases I ever made.
Congratulations on your upgrade.
SPDIF is breaking the Redbook CD playback you had with your original (probably cheap compared to now) CD player. You’re getting 4 data lines mixed into 1, and require extraction to the original state of the data file. If you can get an I2S working on your upgrade to a DS DAC in the future, you will match a cd player’s Redbook playback stream, and is what you should have in a reference playback system. Don’t worry, everyone says once you get an I2S connection to your dac working, which there is sadly no official specification for yet, it sounds better in some ways that it sounds worth it.
I have a Digital Interface that can provide an audio-dedicated I2S output for me coming in two days. This is an older version of a model that people say got much better in later revisions, but that was still after it was getting rave I2S reviews right from it’s first generations, and it’s very cheap for being so old. But, until we get the I2S going on, even our basic Redbook playback is losing Redbook certification at the point of digital output. Yours for being 4 cables crammed into 1, but at least dedicated, and mine for being USB, not designed as a dedicated although remaining I2S audio signal. Mine may be worse, if your SPDIF output is first rate, but from my pc, onboard audio breaks playing audio properly before it even gets started with anything else, even SPDIF to a DAC can’t save it, after that. At least mine is a highly regarded while only relatively more expensive USB receiver.