I have a DAC working with my SB3: a California Audio Lab CL-15 CD player, with PSDIF digital input into its 20 bit DAC. I have another DAC in my home theater room: a Linn Unidisk SC, and I think that the sound quality is about the same (well, sometimes I feel the CAL is better, sometimes not). I have been enjoying the good sound and the convenience brought by the SB3 until I got a Sony XA9000ES SACD/CD player - originally for playing SACD discs, then I found it is also an excellent CD player. Soon I feel that the sound of the Sony is better than my SB3+CAL DAC, not a big difference, but distinct enough that I found I tend to listen to the Sony more and more, with old fashioned take_out_disc_from_the_shelf_and_put_it_into_the_CD tray, when I got serious in listening. There is no digital input on the Sony, by the way.
My system consists of Conrad Johnson CT5 and LP70S amplifiers, Dynaudio C4 speakers. I ripped CDs with iTunes on my iMac and stream the music to my SB3 via an 11g wireless router. I don't hear much difference between the SB3+CAL DAC and the CAL CD player playing the original CD disc. My question is: will the Transporter deliver better sound with its digital output into my CAL DAC? Before I purchased the SB3, I got confirmation from the Slim Device tech support that the digital output of the SB3 and Transport are the same. Want to double check here. 2nd question: assuming TP analog output is not good enough compared with my Sony (well, I make this assumption because Stereophile put the TP at A class and the Sony at A+ class, I maybe wrong, bear with me), how do I improve by combining the TP/SB3 with a high quality DAC? There are extensive discussions in this forum about using an external word clock or a DAC with a clock output, and I agree with seanadams that an external clock may generate more jitters. So, the solution seems to be 1) get a high quality DAC with clock output, and connect it with the TP and put TP on slave (any suggestions on the brands?); 2) get a high quality DAC with "re-clock" capability (I read somewhere that Benchmark DAC-1 can do this. Any suggestions?), and connect it with my existing SB3 (or TP, if there is a difference in their digital output). Dear Experts in this forum and Sean, any answers/comments to my questions are much appreciated. Vincent -- vincentyan ------------------------------------------------------------------------ vincentyan's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=17868 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=49256 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
