killer cd,transport player

[Tony Moore]

Hi Smithie,

Yes, I bought the CDPro2M and controller board from DaisyLaser/Home Optics:

http://www.diy-high-end.com/cd/

in July after being inspired again by Fred Shaw at the EggFest1. The original idea was to replace my transport at the time, a Marantz CD6000OSE. My DAC then was the Hawk Audio MP-DAC:

http://www.hawkaudio.nl/cd-dvd/daceng.html

So the transport upgrade was simply to find out if the transport made any difference to the sound. Bear in mind that I had previously fitted the CD6000 with the Trichord Clock and digital I/O reclocker and psu. So it had a decent S/Pdif output and far better clock.

Well, the result was amazing. HUGE difference. Far more than I would've imagined. Bass far bigger, soundstage a lot more fixed, a lot more "abient". Plus it tracks CDs so much better, even ones that used to jump on every player I've ever had it just plays without a hitch.

I'd built my transport with the optional Tent XO3 clock so my next stage was to add the XO-DAC and try out the Tent Link. Here again, an improvement but nowhere near the improvement of the original switch to the CDPro2.

Then of course Leo got me started thinking about Non-oversampling DACs instead of the Crystal 4390 128x oversampling DAC that was in the Hawk. He pointed me to the DAC pcb design made by Pedja Rogic. Luckily I got one of the very last pcbs that Pedja had! I built this and really enjoyed the sound from the TDA1541A. The next step was to combine the Pedja pcb and power supplies with the output buffer board from the Hawk and build another case. (Using my own "flat-pack" design with panels built by Schaeffer in Germany) http://www.schaeffer-ag.de/index.php...age&Itemid=205

I have also added reclocking to the I2S lines and also DEM relocking.

http://users.verat.net/~pedjarogic/a...v_gallery2.htm

I have more photos of the build if anyone is remotely interested...

Tony