I much prefer German audio mags to US mags because they're far more pragmatic, and www.stereo.de has been my favorite (it also was my Dad's kinda runs in the family). Plus it's one way to keep my German fluent while I live in California.
But enough of that - the March issue http://www.stereo.de/st/seiten/default.asp?seitenid=110 has a 3 page review of the Transporter. It is a *very* favorable review, assigning it 80% in absolute sound reference as a DA converter (100% would be something like Accuphase's new $50k combo of separate CD transport and DA), which is awesome for a $2,000 (surprisingly it seems to sell in Europe for Euro 2,000, I know I'd buy mine in the USA :-) It should also be noted that famed German Burmester's 980 SRC DA converter, a Euro 8,500 piece, scored 81% in their absolute sound test. A very favorable review indeed. They also clearly say they used a totally vanilla PC and did not optimize anything in the wireless network for the Transporter, and that they'd firmly expect that would make a positive difference on top. They used WAVs for their tests. When they let the Transporter go against other systems, they fed the original CD from the TEAC Esoteric player into the SPDIF interface on the Transporter, basically testing if networked or direct sounds best over the Transporter's DA, an interesting twist. They said the choice came down to the preference in flavor, but that purely subjectively the signal fed through the TEAC sounded better (thus disproving many SPDIF jitter theories, I assume... or not!). They also use the Transporter head-on against the Benchmark DAC1 as a DA, and the Transproter beats the DAC1 with more smoothness and agility. The review closes hoping that Slim Devices stays fully committed to advance the high end audio streaming concept under its new ownership, a great compliment by a very pragmatic and outspoken mag. >From the lab, they report: linear frequency characteristics, but without deemphasis. Good square and impluse behavior, negligble distortion, very small .1% linearity deviation. Excellent 116dB SNR, and better "quantization noise" of 98dB in the right channel compared to the left. -- pablolie ------------------------------------------------------------------------ pablolie's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3816 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33276 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
