What CD player /Transport & DAC would replace CD555 & dual PS555s?

I understand both Luxman and Accuphase to be less clinical in their presentation which is definitely the sound I am looking for, definitely wanting to avoid anything too fatiguing!

No SACDS, do you feel the transport to have limited impact on the quality of playback?

Indeed! :grinning:

I understand what you are saying but when listening to music, the whole experience plays it part for me, I generally have no view on what I am going to play until I have physically looked at my CD shelves. This for me just can’t be replicated via streaming, in terms of playback quality, I think my ears would struggle to hear anything better than the CD555 with 2 power supplies.

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Ayon is a brand I am not familiar with but natural to warm sound is certainly to my taste so certainly one I will research more, many thanks

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Well then you are like me with no SACD’s
I have found with my dac, that it makes very little difference what transport is used if you just go digital out into the dac.
The dac is where you want to spend the money and will 100% make the biggest difference to sound.
As long as the transport is decent and the connection between transport and dac is good and works fine then really that’s it.
I use just an old sony cd player, but as a transport only.
Coaxial out to in, and the cd’s sound fantastic. Even better when i upsample them from the standard red book, right up to DSD x2. The difference then is so good, you will never want to hear it in just red book only, as it just sounds so flat and boring in comparison.

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I am not sure to agree about the little part the transport has to play.
Look for instance at the level of build quality the Cd555 has. It’s bulky and massive, in order to give the most immunity to the cd mechanism , to not be disturbed by any vibrations.

Some compared Cd5xs into Ndac/ 5555 ps to Cd555. I remember people preferred notably the later.

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All i can say is try it.
I have and found very little difference in using just a transport into my dac.
As long as the transport is good, then the results i found where so close it wasn’t really worth worrying about.
I also wouldn’t go mad spending thousands on just the transport.
Unless you can lock clocks all together like dcs, and then duel aes, etc, etc. But this is manufacturer matching to get the maximum results. It will cost, but could be worth the extra if CD’s are all you play.

The problem comes if you have SACD’s to play or your dac works best with certain types of input.
It’s why i just use a second-hand £180 sony es3000 cd player with my £69000 dac and upsampler.

But if you want the best transport, then there’s only one. Just go get an Esoteric, with the newest VRDS transport you can afford.

I would concur, as long as there isn’t a fault the transport makes little difference. ANA[DIALOG] did a test with a very expensive Ayon with its over-engineering and fancy components made of gold, oil, silver… and there was minuscule difference is any between that and supermarket DVD player feeding a good DAC. I have done the test between billets of aluminium enclosing what is often a cheap SANYO drive, D&M drive or something from StreamUnlimited CD mechanism and could not hear a difference as the DACs were all good quality. It’s the DAC implementation and analogue output that matter most and even then the difference between a machine costs hundreds vs tens of thousands is little. Many transports have been checked in terms of checksum and also for jitter and again unless the unit is broken both are exemplary. People bang on about noise but just use optical instead. A good DAC will recheck the optical input anyway.

If i follow your logic, a 50 dollars Teac transport into Nds/555 dr will sound at the same level as CD555?

If you use digital out from a cd player, bypassing the on board dac/analogue output stage. Then yes they will sound very much the same in to said dac.
That’s why the preferred way to do cd play back these days is with a separate dac, as most have a decent dac these day’s and if not then you are far better off spending the money on getting a decent dac, than you are getting a cd player.

This was the best , or among the very best , cd transport available.
Only transport, without a dac.
CEC made also some transports at 1/15 of the TLO price. Why produce a much better transport, immune from vibrations…if their entry level one will sound the same with an outboard dac?


CEC TLO

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The advantage of buying a CD player is you’re buying a complete system (transport/Dac) with a known and consistent sound quality.

That’s not the case if you buy a dac and separate transport.

Even though you’ve spent 69 grand on a dac and upsampler, you’re still auditioning cables costing thousands, in an attempt to get the right sound. Some people enjoy doing that; some people don’t want the hassle.

There is no preferred way. Some people prefer one way, other people prefer another way.

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It’s a Naim forum after all but AN are decent transports/dacs

If your CD555 does fail buy another one second hand :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I get what you are saying about a cd player.
But for most and myself, havin a separate dac that you are probably using already for streaming or even if not streaming now, having the ability to add a streamer in the future could be beneficial. As you dont need 2 dac’s or more in a system, just one that’s as good as you can get or afford is the way.
Also then if you’re expensive, cd player goes wrong. You are potentially in the crap, but a cheaper transport is less of a burden.
But as always, you do what you feel is best for you.

As for cables, then for me, it was the ethernet cable i was spending money on and nothing to do with my expensive dac.
It’s no different to switches, etc, and doesn’t have anything to do with sound quality when i use my cd transport. I just use a 5 meter long digital coaxial cable that was about £100.
I find just about everything i run through my dac sounds just about the same.

Never encountered such case. All transports sounded different and often spdif output of a full player is nowhere near a separate transport

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I agree. I have done a fair bit of testing of different CD players and transports into the Naim DAC as well as one or two other DACs, which I have documented both here and on the old forums. In all, I must have tested around 20 or so CD transports in all, and while a good number sounded very close, there were clear differences, and the best of them definitely performed on a higher level than the majority. The best could get the hairs on your arms bristling when listening in a way that the others just couldn’t. Also, a few were obviously much worse (cue, the “cheap” DVD player, and a big old Sony ES “battleship”). Toslink optical was great leveller, but sadly that level was consistently below what the average coaxial s/pdif could achieve, let alone the very best.

n.b Interestingly, you could change the way the Marantz, Philips and Technics players would perform just by flipping the figure eight mains connector. With any figure eight connector, always try both ways - often you’ll easily hear a preference one way or another.

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Many years ago I compared ndac/rotel cd player Vs CDS2.

No competition. The CDS2 was far superior.

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That’s probably down to CD players of yesteryear having poor quality optical output.

This is not now always the case. :slightly_smiling_face: