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

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!

Hi All, there will always be the discussions in high end audio whether you can hear the difference in like components. I have been an audiophile for nearly 40 years and not to long ago Electrical Engineers said that if two 100 watt amps have the same topology they will sound the same. Also not too long ago people pushing high end gear said the speaker is the most important component in the audio chain, and one should spend more of their budget on speakers. Anyone remember these gems of wisdom, of cause both are untrue. One does not have to prove there are differences through one formula or another, all one has to do is comparison listen. I have owned many transports over the years, as in, Esoteric P2, several Barclays, Forsell Air, Cec TL-1, Levinson # 37, Krell MD 2 and 10 and so on. I know I've left out a few, but no ones perfect. To say the least they were all good sounding transports, and yes in direct comparison they all sounded different, and all were up to spec. I had the Forsell, Cec and the Barclay in my system at once and one of my audiophile friends switched tranports on five cuts on five CDs and I picked out each transport 10 out of 10 times. I think the reason people can't or won't hear differences in transports are multi faceted. They are not listening to the transports in their own familar system, they don't know how to listen, they are not comparison listening and of cause my favorite, the rationalization that an inexpensive transport is just as good as a real high end transport, after all its only 1s and Os. Yeah right. Make no mistake, you better try your next transport in your system, because not only do they sound diffent to each other, they will also sound different in each system. OK my favorite all time transport, the Forsell, second Cec TL-1. Atlas the Forsell was problematic and was to put plainly a pain in the ass. I got rid of it and have been using the CEC ever since, I've modded it and it remains the most analoque sounding transport, with the Forsell edging it out slightly. I will get off my soap box now and return to my listening room.

If jitter is so important, why do we hardly ever see jitter measurements published for CD players the way we see things like THD, frequency response, etc.? Come to think of it, does anyone know what a good jitter spec would be?