Thanks for the replies, all. After a weekend that involved a good bit of listening, I'm really not sure I can pick out a real difference in sound quality between the two players.
A lot of my initial impressions before level matching them were extremely biased by loudness. As it turns out, the Transporter is about 1 dB louder that the SB3 at fixed output. The CI DAC is 1.5 dB louder than the SB3. Both of these units sounded pronouncedly better until I level matched them using pink noise and an SPL meter, after which they all pretty much sounded the same. (There's a more noticeable difference between the CI unit and the two Slim Devices units, but it's still pretty subtle.) Don't get me wrong, it sounds wonderful, and I almost wouldn't mind buying one just to know that I have pretty darn close to the best that money can buy (I expect there might be a few in here that will take issue with that claim, but I'm not about to drop 5 figures on any single piece of audio gear anytime soon). Plus, I do enjoy its aesthetic qualities and feature set. That said, the SB3 comes awfully close in terms of purely sonic performance, at least to a point where I'm pretty sure I can't tell the difference. I didn't get a chance to do a DBT this weekend so that is to follow this week. I'm willing to believe that there might be something to the theory that audio quality past a certain point works on a pretty subconscious level. If I can identify the Transporter in a blind A/B test as being better most of the time, I'm quite content to make it a fixture in my system. Regarding the noise that my tweeter emits from the SB3 vs the Transporter, I did end up trying them both on RCA outs. No major difference between Transporter on XLR vs RCA. Difference between the SB3 vs Transporter as mentioned before, is very audible with my ear against the tweeter, but as soon as I got a couple feet away, I couldn't hear it anymore. Note that this is at a setting 30 dB above my usual listening volume. So, yes, the noise floor is lower in the TP, but I'm not convinced that it actually matters when I'm sitting 8+ feet from each speaker. Anyway, I have to admit I was a bit disappointed. I was hoping the TP would be a total knockout, but it's been a little underwhelming so far. -- dekaliber ------------------------------------------------------------------------ dekaliber's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9852 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=63394 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
