Starting to miss having a CD Transport

Monty

I've recently offloaded all my Naim gear and settled with my current Mac/Dac solution. However, having loaded up almost 1.5TB of CD's with still a few hundred to go I am missing the simplicity of loading a disc into a transport and pressing play !

As my iTunes library grows it's becoming more and more of a pain to find albums particularly as I'm now adding my many compilations and box sets.....

Can anyone recommend a cheap CD transport I can hook up to my Young to use when I fancy spinning a disc? I like my mates Micromega but this cost him £650 2nd hand and does seem a little fragile (but sounds wonderful). I'd be looking to spend less than £500.

Alan

You should manage a nice one for that. I have had Pioneer stable platter and the Cambridge Audio Discmagic I in recent years and rate them both as the best transports I have used. I would have thought a nice beefy TEAC VRDS would be the best bet though, especially if you can find one with a clock mod. There was a T1 with trichord mods doing the rounds on WigWam a year or so ago that would be perfect.

uglymusic

Why not just play CDs from the drive in your mini? Much cheaper!

spacey

How about a Cyrus Discmaster. Or Meridian 500.

Alan

Hello Monty!

I spotted this this morning, could be just the ticket: TEAC VRDS 10SE for £300.

http://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/showthread.php?t=100819

Alan

Another one Monty, if you don't mind your transport being in a biscuit tin! However, I had a similar one and it is truly a class transport. This one is optical out only.

http://www.hifiwigwam.com/showthread.php?56311-For-Sale-Pioneer-PDS-801-Cd-Player-with-Stable-Platter-Mechanism-Transport

Monty

Thanks Alan,

A fellow Chews member has offered me a Meridian 602 transport. Does anyone else have any experience with them?

Cheers, Adrian

spacey

602 is old, but if still working worth a listen. I doubt it'll be serviceable though.

culturecrammer

Rega Apollo, or much better still, a 2nd hand Rega Saturn. You can't get better for that money IMO. :-)

mattlynch

hi monty, perhaps consider one of the many budget multi format players on the market , they can be had for peanuts and are super versatile , considering the fine DAC you are using it would make sense, as it would allow you to pick up hi res format discs that are not selling so well and can be had cheap, i know it they may not have much 'hi fi street cred' but its the DAC you will be listening to, worth a look at least.
all the best,
matt

Docfoster

Matt might be on to sonething.
Until recently I ran a cheapish Sony Bluray player as a CD transport too, it sounded great into my trusty MuFi DAC. I think others have found that BDPs make good CD transports too.

Rawl99

Monty,

I have a couple of thoughts I wish to share with you regarding transports. I and some colleagues have done extensive comparisons between all nature of disc spinners and with a dac that does not reclock the spdif it would be fair to say that they vary very significantly in sq. Interestingly, even with dacs that reclock they still seem to differ quite significantly. If you want to play redbook CDs then a dedicated player rather than a universal player seems to be better. A cheaper DVD or bluray is significantly inferior to a good cd only player in our experience. I have an extensively modified cd94 which has beaten any other player I have put against it (bar one other oldie which I am currently modifying to become it's replacement). A heavily modified OPPO was beaten hands-down so something similar to a 94 is worth a look. If you are able a listening test before purchase is obviously a great idea. Most of the modern cd/DVD players we find are compromised compared with the older stuff. The almighty $ re mfg costs rules these days. In days of old quality seemed to be the driving factor.
These older units sonically seem to consistently have a more relaxed and fluid presentation. More musical and less .

Just a little food for thought.

cheers
Rawl