I can give you one perspective on this, based on trying my Transporter with my Mark Levinson 390S CD player.
(The 390S has digital inputs, so can also be used as a DAC, although without a word clock connection. I should also say that I have only just purchased the Transporter, so this is not based on long periods of listening.) My impression is that playing the digital output from the Transporter via the 390S was somewhat more detailed, compared going direct from the Transporter's balanced output to my pre-amp. It was hard, though, the get the volume levels exactly the same, so I could not claim that this was, in any sense, an objective comparison. And WSLam is quite right to make the point, that different is not necessarily better .... One other point: this comparison was only made with 44.1kHz / 16 bit recordings. It seems that the 390S only accepts CD-level resolution on its digital inputs (although it does then upsample). I must say that 88.2kHz / 24 bit FLAC files played direct through the Transporter sound fantastic! In any event, although some difference (improvement?) may be possible by connecting via an external DAC, I am inclined to say that it is probably not worth it. Whether with 44.1 / 16 or higher resolutions, the Transporter on its own sounds great! No need to experiment, in my opinion .... -- Vereina ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Vereina's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=22342 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=59067 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
