I’ve only seen subjective reviews, but the functionality seems good. At this point the only thing to worry about in a transport is the longevity of the laser and moving parts, right? It’s about the same price as the Cambridge Audio transport but the Cambridge doesn’t have number buttons on the remote so that would make the choice easy for me.
On the other hand, the marantz cd6006 is about the same price and if you ever wanted to use it as a CD player and not just a transport you could.
For posterity on this old thread: The Audiolab seems to use an automotive slot-loading mechanism, but I can’t find out who makes them. I’m guessing but I don’t know. It should be reliable enough but I don’t know about serviceability.
The Cambridge Audio CXC uses the standard cheapie Sanyo tray-loading transport that is the only one that can be bought new these days. The Marantz 6006 uses the same Sanyo transport.
A player with a really durable transport will have to be a used high-end model with a Philips pro mech, or an older player with the better Sony or Philips prosumer mechs. The Sony pro stuff is usually great but it’s older. The problem I run into with these is the mechanical drawer or CD loading mechanism.
If the laser works properly and puts out a good eye pattern, the transport is doing its job of delivering correct data. The ability to track across scratches and flaws is the only other requirement. If it delivers the correct data without skipping or dropping data too easily across flaws, then there will be no difference in the data stream fed to the DAC, and the DAC takes over from there. Utterly transparent DACs have been commodity items for what, a decade? But even when they weren’t, any claim of detecting a difference would need something more than assertion to be persuasive. And dedicated DACs in CD players have been transparent for much longer than standalone DACs.
I can’t tell the difference between good CD players from throughout the CD era. I’m sure there were bad ones where flaws would be more noticeable. I think some people are hearing what they see.
The Cambridge Audio CXC remote, by the way, uses the Philips RC-5 protocol. Any CD player remote that uses that protocol will work, including remotes with number keys for selecting tracks. I can do everything on the CXC with the remotes for both my Magnavox CDB-650 and my Naim CD5 except change the display brightness.
Rick “who owns six CD players from across the spectrum of age and price, and all are excellent when they work at all” Denney