I had posted in this Forum a while ago about my concerns with Slim devices, including the Transporter. I too was very, very attracted to the Transporter as a great all-in-one solution for high-quality replay of PC-based music. I too already had an SB3, which was okay for a tertiary system in the bedroom. The Transporter would be the solution for a secondary system while my primary system is CD/SACD based. In the end I went with a fanless NAS (Infrant Repertoire), PC (HP TouchSmart), a visual player (AlbumPlayer) and a USB interface (Empirical Off-Ramp) with an AES interface to a high quality pre/DAC (Bryston). I did this for two reasons: 1. I was concerned that Slim Devices would always represent a sub-set of the rapidly evolving technologies for PC-based media. This was already true with the inability of the Transporter to play 88.2/24 FLAC files that I have from Linn. Not a particularly big deal in the specific case, but it underlined the general issue in the same way that I do not use an Apple Mac despite my total appreciation for the operating system: There is far richer ecosystem of music media management and playing on Windows than on OS-X. 2. My music collection is large (>50,000 tracks and another 25,000 to be added). The Slim technologies make this a little tough to scroll through, even though it is a great hardware interface. The AlbumPlayer jukebox interface with the HP TouchSmart is a fun way to flip through large collections and recognize the music I am looking for. It is not perfect and it is a small outfit that may not survive. The good thing is that does not matter - there are plenty of other players today and even more next year. I am not locked into something that does not evolve. This solution may seem complicated, but the component approach makes things very flexible. If there is a better USB or PC media interface standard in the future I can swap out the Off-Ramp. If there is a better DAC standard, then I can swap out the Bryston. Meanwhile, I can still run SlimServer using the same data files and feed my SB3.
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