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Reference Transports: An overall perspective

Teajay did a great job by starting a threat called "Reference DACS: An overall perspective."
I thought it might be beneficial to start a similar thread on transports.
Unfortunately I really have nothing much to say; I just hoped to get the ball rolling.

I'll start by throwing out a few names and a question:

Zanden 2000
CEC TL-0X
Metronome Kalista; T2-i Signature; and T2-A
Esoteric P-01; and P-03(?)
EMM Labs CDSD
47Labs PiTracer
Weiss Jason
Accustic Arts Drive 1
Ensemble Dirondo
Wadia 270se

I know that there are very few companies that actually make the drives themselves. The few I know about are:
Philips
TEAC
Sanyo/CEC

Do the various Philips drives or the TEAC VRDS transport mechanism each have a particular sonic signature regardless of which maunufacturer uses them in their designs?
exlibris
yioryos's avatar
yioryos
723 posts
 
Sony and Pioneer also manufacture transport mechanisms.
khaki8
206 posts
 
The new Audio Note transports deserve consideration. I own the new CDT 2 and it is much better than the CEC TL2X that I had modified by Reference Audiomods.
teajay
1,333 posts
 
I have had in my rig the following transports: 1) CEC-TL1 It sounded wonderfully smooth with great liquidity but lacked dynamics and deep bass. 2) ML-31.5 Very detailed, dynamic, great bass, and was very smooth but not warm sounding like the CEC transport. 3) Ensemble Dirondo Offers very good details/dynamics with a smooth/easy over all sonic signature. It also offers an interesting feature that it will upsample to 24/96 the bit stream before it gets to the DAC, which sometimes will improve the sonics of the DAC, even if the DAC is an upsampling design.
So, I'm convinced that transports do have sonic signatures, and that belt driven transports have a different signature, I also have heard extensively the CEC TL-0, then the non belt transports.
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