highdungeon, yes, I definitely hear differences between the transports/SB2 using the same DAC. And here's another kicker...someone came over last week with a $600 digital cable (Virtual Dynamics), and using that on my SB2 closed the gap signicantly against my reference DAC using a different cable (Acoustic Zen MC^2).
As far as the buffering system in my Dodson DAC, it is considered to be pretty state-of-the-art. Ralph Dodson (the designer) has been a government defense contractor for 30+ years designing digital guidance systems and other military digital systems. The DA-218 DAC has two buffers (one before up/oversampling, one after) and re-clocks the signal just prior to feeding it to the actual DAC chip. And *still* the transport makes a difference! Go figure... FWIW, I am a co-founder of a local audio club in the NY Metro area, and I host 2-3 listening sessions and gear shootouts every year...and we have done transport shootouts a few times (a lot of guys in our group used to have the same Sony S7700 I have, but with different levels of mods, so we've compared all the different effects of the mods). Many of them have sold that Sony and gone to the SB2/3, although just about all of them have also spent a lot of money modding the SB2/3 to get it to the level of the modded S7700... If you're ever in the NYC area, give me a shout! -- PhilNYC Sonic Spirits Inc. http://www.sonicspirits.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PhilNYC's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=837 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=22301 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
