I have both the transporter and SB3, I find the transporters sound thru its dac clinical and unnvolving compared the My Jolida CDP. It's a very accurate sound and even thru a Musical fidelity valve headphone amp it's still not tamed so I doubt even a tubed pre would help that much. Maybe its a personal thing on my part..but there are others that share my sentiments. At the moment I put up with it cos I wanted the transporter for other reasons , but it wasnt the upgrade I expected from my cdp's sound into my headphone setup. I think I would have been better off with a SB and a dac with balanced and rca outputs , as I cant really change the transporters sonics to suit my taste. I was hoping for the magic bullet , but never got it. At least with a duet/sb and offboard dac you can experiment and try different dacs till you get what you want. So my suggestion is to go SB3 or Duet.......your mileage may vary. Unfortnately I never had the facilities to audition a TP as I live in South Africa and the agents had to get one in for me. At any rate , I would suggest audition one first ......try its internal dac and then try its spdif output into the dac of your choice , see which you prefer , if its the offboard dac , go with my suggestion of the sb or duet.
Make no mistake, the transporter is damn good value for what it can do and what it is....... I use the TP's RCA, XLR and spdif outputs simultaneously in one room and use the SB's digital output into a pretty expensive pair of meridian speakers. There is still one thing I want to try and thats to use my Z-sys which is a digital pre , digital parametric eq and has some dither settings , betwwen the TP's own spdif out and its dac inputs , this was possible with a version of its firmware , however the firmware has been withdrawn and on my setup the new firmware caused other problems , Im sure this foldback feature will be reinstated at some time with stable FW. -- Rodney_Gold Sb3/Z-sys RDP1/meridian DSP5500's TP/X-cans v3/Senns 650's TP/TACT 2.0/SCM 50a's TP/Meridian DSP5000's "The nicest thing about smacking your head against the wall is...the feeling you get when you stop" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rodney_Gold's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=14618 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=46064 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
