stop-spinning;608150 Wrote: > Thanks Phil - you always seem to be around to answer questions quickly. > > I wasn't referring to the internal DAC of the SB per se, more how the > SB acts as a transport and thus feeding a clean signal out to an > external DAC of any type, be it one that compensates well - or older > DACs (which I would like to experiment with) which may not compensate > so well. So, in essence, how good is the SB as a transport? Is it as > good as any other hi-end CD transport - or perhaps better because there > are no moving mechanical parts to consider. > > On the flip side - perhaps the SB Duet is not high enough up the food > chain for the Audiophile in stock form. See here's this link I am > concerned about: > http://forums.linn.co.uk/bb/showthread.php?tid=7730&page=1 with this > reference 'I got a Logitech Duet when they came out and tried it with > Numerik D/A and somewhat surprisingly, it sounded totally crap compared > to a Karik CD player feeding the same Numerik D/A; in fact, the Duet > also sounded crap compared to a Sonos feeding the same Numerik D/A, so > it's clear that they have got something very wrong in the Duet'
I've had both Duet and Touch on their own and slaved to Empirical Audio Pace Car. In all cases I used them with SPDIF out to external DAC, because it improved the sound, IMO. Presently I'm using a MF X-DACV3, which is an improvement for me. There are some very good DACs these days for $300-$1000 that will give you an improvement over the stock SB sound of both units, I think. But you need to listen first, or you may waste your money. In other words, you might not hear much of an improvement, especially with the Touch. It depends on your system, your ears, and the DAC. That said, in answer to your queries: I don't think the Duet sounded very good on it's own, but through the external DACs I tried it with it was very good. The Touch is better, but also improved through a good DAC. In both cases the sound improved when slaved to the Pace Car as external clock/buffer. -- firedog Tranquil PC fanless WHS server running SqueezeServer; SB Touch slaved to Empirical Audio Pace Car; MF V DAC3, MF X-150 amp, Devore Gibbon Super 8 Speakers; Dual 506 + Ortofon 20 (occasional use); sometimes use PC with M-Audio 192 as digital source. SB Boom in second room. Arcam CD82 which I don't use anymore, even though it's a very good player. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ firedog's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=11550 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=84903 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
