In fact, that’s the reason why I still haven’t burned my entire CD collection to a server yet–I’m not quite ready to move on. I still get a lot of joy from my huge CD collection, and there are many red book CDs that I still use as demo discs and so-called sonic references. That’s interesting, at least to me, because it shows loyalty to a physical format that many have given up for dead. “The in-house custom modified Philips front loading CD mechanism is designed purely to read true Red Book CD, which in our opinion is still the best possible Digital music format currently available.” I had no idea I could be this enchanted with a CD transport.Īudio Note UK says this about the CDT One/II: I dig both the Cobra and the AN-J/D Hemp loudspeakers, but the CDT might have been the selling point for this trio. But out of the three Audio Note components, I was most surprised by the CDT. Now, you can eliminate the Audio Note CDT One/II transport from the mix and still stream away–just subtract the CDT’s $4,958 price. As I mentioned in the review of the AN-J/Ds, this turned out to be a killer system for well under $20K total. That means I started out with a fairly simple Audio Note system: the Cobra, the CDT and the AN-J/D Hemp speakers with their dedicated stands, with a small loom of Audio Note UK cables. I searched up and down the list a couple of times before I noticed that the new Audio Note UK Cobra integrated has a built-in DAC. When I was first informed about the Audio Note UK system I’d be reviewing, I saw the Audio Note UK CDT One/II transport listed and I wondered which one of Audio Note’s very musical DACs would be included as well. It’s just a transport, but one that wound up teaching me a few things. We’re not even talking about the DAC, which usually contributes most of the sonic signature. My first impression was closer to my experience with the Falcon Acoustics LS5/3a MoFi Edition, where I threw my hands up and wondered aloud, “Why does this sound so good? It doesn’t make sense!” In a high-end audio world full of claims that this digital source or that digital source provides the most analog-like sound ever, the Audio Note UK CDT One/II made me sit up straight in my listening chair and proclaim that THIS is the most analog-like sound I’ve ever heard from a CD transport. ![]() That’s not what happened with the Audio Note UK CDT One/II. I know that sounds like my very first experience with a CD player back around 1982, where I was shocked at how music rose from the silence, and it colored my opinions on the compact disc until I came to my senses a few months later and realized I wanted to go back to my AR ES-1 with the Premier MMT arm and the Ortofon MC-X5. This is one of those reviews where all of my prejudices were bluntly addressed once I pressed the PLAY button for the first time. That made me a bit nervous at first, especially in an age where high-end audio products embrace the idea that everything must be solid and heavy and thick and quiet in order to reduce noise and vibration.īut the Audio Note UK CDT One/II digital transport doesn’t play by the rules, which seems to be a common theme among all these Peter Qvortrup designs I’ve been testing over the last few months. (That’s one of the things I’ve discovered about Audio Note UK, that everything is lighter than I expect.) The tray is clunky and makes considerable noise as it slides in and out, which again reminds me of my first few CD players back in the ’80s from brands such as Sony, Mitsubishi and Magnavox. It’s a big yet relatively light five-kilo box, which suggests the build of early CD players. There’s something downright old-fashioned about the Audio Note UK CDT One/II digital transport. That’s why it’s been tough to sort out the excellence of the Audio Note UK CDT One/II in a reasonable and meaningful way. But the transport? That’s the engine, where it all begins. The DAC is probably analogous to a phono cartridge–that’s where the flavor comes in. If you can’t spin a disc properly, and if you can’t control the vibration from all the moving parts and the motors, the sound will be muddy and blurred and distorted and noisy. ![]() It provides the foundation for the sound of the playback chain. A digital transport, in this day and age, is similar to a turntable in an analog system. I think we audiophiles can agree that a transport can impact the sound. Can a mere digital transport such as the Audio Note UK CDT One/II make a huge difference in the sound quality of a hi-fi system? Isn’t that the purview of the digital-to-analog converter that is paired with the transport?
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