Hi Jglim,
Quote from Jglim: "From my reading of other people's reviews (no personal experience with transporter myself), the use of the transporter seems to outperform a DAC in the 2-3K region."
In my experience this has not been the case. As stated above, I feel that although the Transporter DAC was no slouch and it may certainly be considered pleasing, it was not able to outperform the $1000 Benchmark DAC1, nor the $2500 Bel Canto DAC3.
In other words, I feel that the Dac in the Transporter is good enough to allow an audiophile who doesn't own an external DAC, to live with it happily for a year or so, until they may be able to upgrade to a stand-alone DAC.
However, when the Transporter was used as a stand-alone Transport, I felt that although it lost the shootout, it did hold it's own against the 10 times more expensive MBL 1621A Transport.
I hope that helps you.
Rich
Quote from Jglim: "From my reading of other people's reviews (no personal experience with transporter myself), the use of the transporter seems to outperform a DAC in the 2-3K region."
In my experience this has not been the case. As stated above, I feel that although the Transporter DAC was no slouch and it may certainly be considered pleasing, it was not able to outperform the $1000 Benchmark DAC1, nor the $2500 Bel Canto DAC3.
In other words, I feel that the Dac in the Transporter is good enough to allow an audiophile who doesn't own an external DAC, to live with it happily for a year or so, until they may be able to upgrade to a stand-alone DAC.
However, when the Transporter was used as a stand-alone Transport, I felt that although it lost the shootout, it did hold it's own against the 10 times more expensive MBL 1621A Transport.
I hope that helps you.
Rich