ב-stereophile בדקו את SB3 עם X-DAC (עולה פי-4 מה-V-DAC), ועדיין העדיפו את Transporter.
אולי לא בגלל הביצועים שך ה-DAC, אבל שוב, כטרנספורט דיגיטלי נטו
http://www.stereophile.com/mediaservers ... ndex1.html
[left]
Transports of joy
The more significant comparison was undoubtedly that between the Squeezebox 3 feeding an external DAC and the Transporter. While I'm sure the Transporter may convince some audiophiles of the legitimacy of networked music systems, the resistance to such systems that I've experienced in the audiophile community suggests that its more natural market might be the most discerning among the folks who already own the SB3.
I'd been using Musical Fidelity's X-DACV3 ($999) with the Squeezebox 3 ($299) in my dedicated small-speaker listening room downstairs, so I brought that combination up to the main listening room for the comparison. The X-DACV3 is no slouch—it incorporates Burr-Brown's latest chipset, the DSD1792/SRC4192/3, which upsamples to 24-bit/192kHz. Add a Stereovox XV2 digital interconnect ($149), and the Squeezebox-X-DACV3 system costs $1447—not exactly a giant step from the $1999 Transporter.
Actually, before I tried the SB3–X-DACV3 combo, I did a quick comparison between the unprocessed SB3 and the Transporter. That didn't last long—as remarkable as the SB3 is for $299, John Atkinson was correct in his assessment of both an aggressive edge and congested soundstage (September 2006). No, to really polish the Squeezebox, you have to pair it with a quality DAC.
I know I sound like an übergeeky audiophile when I say that the Transporter set the music against a darker background, but all the differences between the Transporter and the SB3-XDACV3 system sprang from that basic difference: everything from background to foreground had less grain and noise. The signal leaped from its backdrop with far more contrast and detail.
This, of course, meant that, on the Goldbergs, I heard Glenn Gould's humming and buzzing better, too. Fair enough—it's there, and if it's there, I want to hear it (I guess). I also heard more of the acoustic in Frankfurt's Jahrhundert Halle with the Grateful Dead, which means the Transporter was more like being there. And Robert Silverman's Beethoven sounded far more dynamic through the Transporter, which is to say it sounded much more like listening to Bob than listening to a recording.
Yes, the Transporter is worth the upgrade, even from an SB3 driving a high-end DAC. Most of the time, I would have to add a disclaimer like Of course, if you have multiple digital inputs, an outboard DAC may have more functionality—but the Transporter has extra digital inputs and convenient source switching to boot. [/left]
