Silly Question...does a transport have a "sound" ?

It sounds like instead of buying a new dedicated CD player to improve upon my CD sound, I should just buy a good DAC and plug my Pioneer 47ai digital out to it.

Anyone recommend a good DAC for under $2k?

Jafox: G&D does mods to the PD-65 as far as i know. They were the first company to use such things as "super clocks" and "precision regulators" in mass produced audio gear. Prior to this, the only people doing such things were DIYer's tweaking their own gear. Tony simply put his DIY approach to improving a good but simple and cost effective product on the market for all to buy and use.

Ehoehn: I'm not 100% certain, but i think that G&D are the initials of the last names of the proprietors. Tony's name is something like De Giovanni or Giovanni, etc... Bob Crump would know this one.

As far as their transports still being available, i don't think so. It is possible that Tony may have some laying around somewhere, but i doubt it. This is not to say that he wouldn't be willing to modify what you already have. To be quite honest though, there are better ways to impliment the technology used in the mods that Tony came up with than the way that he did them many moons ago. In effect, one of these older "modified" transports could benefit from further modifications even today.

Bundy: Adding a DAC means two additional links to the chain. I don't know how "worthy" the Pioneer is in this regards ( due to lack of familiarity with it ), but most "professional tweakers" feel that a "one box" is capable of better performance than a "two box" that is built to the same standards. You might want to check with Rick at Electronic Visionary Systems or Kyle at Reference Audio Mods to see what they have to say. Rick is brutally honest and may talk you out of investing more money into the unit itself. That is, if he doesn't think it is worth messing with. Pioneer sometimes uses proprietary DAC's that aren't that great, wasting much of the potential benefits of a one-box design. Sean
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The partners in G&D are Ben Gilsdorf and Tony DiGiovine.
They stopped producing the UTP-1 transport several years ago. It's terrific especially when modded.

Brian

In my exp yes. The important thing is to find a match. Ie: I have a Parasound Transport matched with a Parasound DAC2000. Good combo, great sound. If I use a cheap sony player as the transport, same DAC, I can hear the difference, but it's not much, only slightly noticeable.

Short answer: No
The only thing audible in ANY digital system are the
algorhythms in the converter and the clock.
Bad converters give you the thin 'digital' sound and a bad clock smears the soundstage ("jitter"). Transports only job is to keep the RAM-buffer filled.
Should you visit a recording studio you might find that all their transports are cheap computer drives (I hear Yamahas are quite popular) but clocked from a masterclock whose cost can easily go into the thousands (Apogee are very well regarded).Sometimes these clocks are even placed in different rooms or buildings as they are susceptible to vibration.
Oh, high-end cd systems don't usually have clock in/outs? Thats about as sensible as having an analog
tonearm with the cartidge welded into place!