to be fair to dCs; almost every Esoteric VRDS-NEO based transport (all the big guns) gets into the over $35k price range as the raw parts cost exceeds $5k each piece, just for that piece, no matter the volume. plus all the rest of the build costs for casework and circuit boards.
then do the 5x BoM calculation and there you go.
not saying it makes sense; but it's reality.
you want that pretty stack of boxes you will pay for it.
Well, I hosted a Wadia 861SE last year for an afternoon. It was being bought used from an hifi broker by a good friend and he asked me to run my Pierre Verany test disk on it. It failed in many tracks that the Vivaldi manages to go through. We opened it to look inside. There is no possible comparison between the VRDS mechanism and the VRDS NEO of the Vivaldi - besides the Vivaldi reads SACD's.
Although I am skeptical on the use of measurements in high-end, it is nice knowing that technically the Vivaldi is beyond reproach. Anyway, it seems no one knows exactly why the Vivaldi transport plays so good in the Vivaldi DAC.
The Metronome Kalista uses the same mechanism as the Audio Research CD7 player - Philips CD-Pro2LF. The Kalista costs 3 time more and IMHO plays 10 times better in an appropriate DAC ...
to be fair to dCs; almost every Esoteric VRDS-NEO based transport (all the big guns) gets into the over $35k price range as the raw parts cost exceeds $5k each piece, just for that piece, no matter the volume. plus all the rest of the build costs for casework and circuit boards.
5k? The Esoteric P-03 costs 13k with the same transport (which I'm sure is jacked up pricing-wise vs. true Japanese price, but that's a different story). I'm still confused at 3.5x for the same transport.
to be fair to dCs; almost every Esoteric VRDS-NEO based transport (all the big guns) gets into the over $35k price range as the raw parts cost exceeds $5k each piece, just for that piece, no matter the volume. plus all the rest of the build costs for casework and circuit boards.
then do the 5x BoM calculation and there you go.
not saying it makes sense; but it's reality.
you want that pretty stack of boxes you will pay for it.
5k? The Esoteric P-03 costs 13k with the same transport (which I'm sure is jacked up pricing-wise vs. true Japanese price, but that's a different story). I'm still confused at 3.5x for the same transport.
Better, significantly better. But here we have a problem - owners will have experience, but some people will also consider that they have owner bias ... Speculation is much funnier ...
BTW, I did not order the transport when I ordered the Vivaldi - I was thinking about keeping the Metronome Calypso Reference. But after listening to the transport for a few weeks I understood it was part of the package.
I have two audio buddies who refuse to go to files and only play their CDs. They contend that dedicated transports sound better than files. I've never done a direct comparison in the same system, so I don't know if I would prefer one to the other.
Better, significantly better. But here you have a problem - owners will have experience, but some people will also consider that they have owner bias ... Speculation is much funnier ...
BTW, I did not order the transport when I ordered the Vivaldi - I was thinking about keeping the Metronome Calypso Reference. But after listening to the transport for a few weeks I understood it was part of the package.
That's my general impression also about high quality transports also, but I have not extensively experimented. Did you, by chance, compare to ripped files or only to your older transport?
I have two audio buddies who refuse to go to files and only play their CDs. They contend that dedicated transports sound better than files. I've never done a direct comparison in the same system, so I don't know if I would prefer one to the other.
Yeap, and proven by the sound - when it comes to high end digital, only spinning will do, at least so far, and a slaved transport goes even further: enter the dCS and many others like it in the past. Two words: jitter and noise. Nothing USB-based can come close to the low noise of the best transports, and we have yet to see how ethernet fares here.
That's my general impression also about high quality transports also, but I have not extensively experimented. Did you, by chance, compare to ripped files or only to your older transport?
Yeap, and proven by the sound - when it comes to high end digital, only spinning will do, at least so far, and a slaved transport goes even further: enter the dCS and many others like it in the past. Two words: jitter and noise. Nothing USB-based can come close to the low noise of the best transports, and we have yet to see how ethernet fares here.
Ack,
Thanks. Where do you believe jitter and noise are introduced? In one case there is probably a NAS full of music files that is connected by ethernet to a streamer, which is then passed the music file to a DAC via SPDIF, AES, or USB. In the case of a transport such as this dCS, it is a separate box connected via SPDIF (?) or AES (?) to their DAC.