The industry has gone back and forth on what is best. In the early 90s, the outboard DAC was "the best". The by the late 90s, sperate DACs kind of died off. The by the mid 00s, they made a comeback, but a much higher price.
This gets way too techinical and could fill up volumns, but if you or connecting a transport to a DAC using the lowley SPDIF standard, you will never really get anywhere, because this only allow for the signal to go on way and does not allow the DAC to talk back to the transport. This has somethng to do with timing and jitter errors and data clocking....needs to be explained a million times by someone else :)
This gets way too techinical and could fill up volumns, but if you or connecting a transport to a DAC using the lowley SPDIF standard, you will never really get anywhere, because this only allow for the signal to go on way and does not allow the DAC to talk back to the transport. This has somethng to do with timing and jitter errors and data clocking....needs to be explained a million times by someone else :)