Oppo as transport

Sounds like a great plan to me, and the transport will be....?

I'll give Oppo a try if I can't find a cd player I can use as a transport.

Sorry for the late response, but Dave aka Dcstep wrote, “So, let me get this straight, you used the Oppo as a transport running through the DAC 3 and it wasn't even close to the Rega through the DAC 3?”

Correct.

Audphile1, IIWY I would find a different transport to use than the Oppo, seriously. You must know someone who will lend you one of their spares...we all have back-ups. LOL

Thanks for the follow-up Lngbruno. That finding is VERY interesting to me. My Playback Designs has an Esoteric VOSP transport, reputed to be one of the very best available and the Oppo gives me roughly 90% of what I get using the PD's internal transport. The difference is some added solidity in the bass and a slight increase in image size going to the PD transport.

I'm not disputing your finding, just observing that with the PD's DAC the diffences caused by transports seems to be greatly reduced. There's a jitter correction process in the PD's DAC that may account for this. PD claims zero jitter using the internal transport, but I haven't read anything about jitter correction from other sources. If they're accomplishing that with external sources, then that could explain the small difference.

Don't get me wrong, it's not so small that I wouldn't use the PD at every chance. However, it is small enough that if I hadn't heard the PD with it's internal transport I probably would have been with the PD's DAC driven by an Oppo.

Dave

Audphile - It was DAC3 that Stereophile reviewed in November 2007. Read below:

Against the benchmark Benchmark
The Benchmark DAC1 has set the standard for affordable D/A processor performance for three years now, and has recently been updated to add a USB input. I will be reporting on the new version in a Follow-Up, but for this review, I compared the Bel Canto e.One DAC3 with the original version of the Benchmark DAC1, which I had purchased after writing about it.

To permit instantaneous comparisons, I fed the Ayre C-5xe's AES/EBU output first to the Levinson No.30.5, then from that processor's two AES/EBU data outputs to the two DACs under test using identical lengths of Madrigal AES/EBU cable. Levels were matched to within 0.05dB at 1kHz by keeping the Bel Canto's output at its maximum and reducing the Benchmark's with its analog level control.

No doubt about it, the Benchmark DAC1 is still an excellent-sounding product, with well-extended, well-defined lows, a natural midrange, and clean highs. And, of course, it doubles its utility by having two pairs of headphone outputs. But the Bel Canto DAC3 scored with its slightly silkier high frequencies and its wider, deeper soundstage.