Bmdduck,
I've been using SC without a preamp for a while with good result. The built in volume control is quite good. Bypassing preamp makes the sound very transparent. However, the analog input section is not very good, so if you have other analog sources a dedicated preamp will serve better for you. The digital input section sounds okay. I've connected Airport Express to the digital input of SC, and it sounds good. I don't have a lot of lossless music on computer so I can't tell you how the digital input compare to the CD from its transport. I haven't watched a lot of movies on SC, as I use it mainly as a music player. I do have some DTS music disks, and Unidisk decodes them just fine.
As far as 5400ES goes, all the reviews I've read said it sounds better than any previous Sony ES players so I am pretty excited about the purchase. It reportedly has long break in period, so it may be a week or two until I can do a meaningful comparison.
I've been using SC without a preamp for a while with good result. The built in volume control is quite good. Bypassing preamp makes the sound very transparent. However, the analog input section is not very good, so if you have other analog sources a dedicated preamp will serve better for you. The digital input section sounds okay. I've connected Airport Express to the digital input of SC, and it sounds good. I don't have a lot of lossless music on computer so I can't tell you how the digital input compare to the CD from its transport. I haven't watched a lot of movies on SC, as I use it mainly as a music player. I do have some DTS music disks, and Unidisk decodes them just fine.
As far as 5400ES goes, all the reviews I've read said it sounds better than any previous Sony ES players so I am pretty excited about the purchase. It reportedly has long break in period, so it may be a week or two until I can do a meaningful comparison.