My Music Hall CD25.32 CD Player has died and I’m thinking instead of replacing it with another CD player I’d go the transport route and connect it to my ND5 XS2 and utilize it’s DAC for the digital processing.
I’m thinking of getting the Audiolab 7000CDT as the CD transport.
Has anyone here used their ND5 XS2 with a transport? Also any thoughts on the Audiolab 7000CDT as the transport??
There are a couple threads about this exact topic.
If you search for “CD transport” in thread title only you will get about 5 recent threads. Yes people are in general very happy with the Audiolab into various Naim streamers. As are they happy with several alternatives.
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Recommend the audiolab CT 9000 rather than the 7000 - far better
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I have a TEAC 505T transport and play it through my NDX2 via optical. It works very well and obviously gives a Naim NDX2 ‘type’ of presentation. Obviously not quite what you are intending but the principle of using the Naim DAC is a good way forward.
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I was faced with the same decision 5yrs ago and bought the Naim Core, which sounds wonderful into my ND5xs2/nDAC/PS555DR.
As the Core has recently been withdrawn from marketing by Naim, suggest you may need to “run” to obtain one.
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I see my ND5-XS2 will accept either optical or coax.
I’m curious, why did you choose connecting via optical vs coax? Is there a difference/advantage with optical over coax?
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It wasn’t a conscious decision to go down the optical route. I had a spare optical cable in my “parts box” so plugged it in and thought it sounded pretty good! At some point I will buy a coax cable and make a comparison. Sorry I can’t offer any convincing advice on which is best.
p.s. the optical cable I am using was not expensive - less than £5. General opinion is that expensive optical cable don’t bring much to the table although I am sure other might take an opposite view. 
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It will depend on the quality of the transport.
While common wisdom has it that coax is superior to optical (it certainly supports higher audio data rates than the Toslink standard), some transports may perform better on one or the other.
One more general truisim is that a lower end optical cable with a non conductive sheath and Toslink end (some are metallic) will provide galvanic isolation and prevent all forms of EM noise (such as ground plane and common mode) from being transferred from an electrically “dirty” device to the DAC. So when connecting cheap things like computers or televisions to a DAC, optical is often preferred.
When it comes to quality transports, experimentation might be required. I’d say the dice are loaded in coax’s favour but it isn’t a rule. Distance is also a factor. Long optical cables are easy to work with.
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Interesting, I tried both toslink and coax with my Music Hall CD player when I first received my Supernait 3 and found the toslink sounded a bit thinner compared to the coax which sounded much fuller especially in the mids…
Did a search and unfortunately came upon this one where the reliability of the Audiolab 7000(and 6000) seems to be a problem to some here, might have to reconsider my choice in CDTs… 
I use a Cambridge CXC transport.
Very happy…and no slot loading.
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Worth bearing in mind that you will be able to find tales of failure and dissatisfaction for every product. Every person with any product that failed early thinks it’s rubbish and wants everyone to stay away. And because misery loves company, more people with similar issues will always chip in. People tend to make a point of describing bad experiences rather than positive ones.
You should pay attention to such things. But also with a grain of salt and perhaps more investigation. Maybe the 7000 is a load of rubbish. Maybe there was a cluster of unlucky users and actually it’s more reliable than others. I don’t know.
The only thing you can count on is that everyone with a unit that works fine or has broken thinks that a statistic of 1 is meaningful.
“Don’t buy it. It’s unreliable. I had one that broke after a week.”
“They are incredibly reliable. I had one for 15 years and it worked flawlessly.”
Neither claims are even remotely informative.
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It has been error free since it came back from repair🤞🏼
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Whilst this is very true, you should bear in mind that the vast majority of posts on this forum should be treated with the same caution then, rendering opinions of “yes it’s great” and " no, I didn’t like it" as not even remotely informative either.
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I understand what you and zen are saying, most will post their bad experiences vs good… Most reviews are pretty good for the 7000cdt but kinda hesitant after googling “audiolab 7000cdt problems”, especially in the Reddit group so I’m going to step back and re-research my choices, 7000cdt is still on my list… 
If you can push the money limit Capt57 I’ve said above the Audiolab CT9000 is far superior to both the 6000 and 7000
Friend of mine had both of the latter ones with some issues on the 6000
He now has the 9000- it is definite step up that’s for sure
Are you able to listen to the 9000 ?
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Sadly no, there’s no dealers within 100 miles of me.
I use my pretty basic Denon DCD-510AE is a transport. Needless to say that the DAC of the ND5 XS 2 is superior to that of the Denon. I use an optical line, but like someone else stated above that was merely because it was available by just grabbing it.
It works well enough for me for the CD’s that I haven’t ripped (yet).
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