I would imagin if you needed a digital out you would not buy this product and buy thier streamer only product. this is a digital all on one system. digital preamp. so having a digital out seem redundant. its basicaly a MSA5500 without the amp section.
McIntosh DS200
Just got an email ad from McIntosh about the new DS200 streamer/DAC. My first reaction is, why is the DAC not upgradeable? Also, there is no digital out. This is a beautiful piece of equipment, but I am dismissing it immediately because of that. Am I wrong?
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@glennewdick yes, that makes sense, up to a point. If the DAC was the upgradeable DA2, as it is in several of their other products, there would definitely be no need for digital out. But how long before the built in DAC is obsolete to new choices? So, either a digital out to salvage the unit as a streamer only, or an upgrade path for the DAC would have made more sense, IMHO. The MDA200 has the DA2. P.S. LOVE your Sansui Tu 9900! |
They specifically call it a "streaming DAC" so seemingly not intended to be used as a transport with separate outboard DAC. McIntosh doesn't seem to like the idea of a pure digital streaming transport for whatever reason. Off the top of my head I can think of their old MS300 music server, the MB50 streaming player, the MB100 media bridge, and the more recent MS500 streamer, and if I recall correctly they all have onboard DAC with analog outputs. A few of them may offer digital outs but the focus really seems to be on using them as a streaming DAC with the option of also using their digital inputs with an external CD transport. I don't know why McIntosh is against doing a pure streaming transport but that really does seem to be the case. |
@mattsca I also dismissed this DS200 as soon as I saw they don’t have any digital output. I was hoping McIntosh would release a Streamer (either with built in DAC or pure transport) that can be connected to an external DAC. The reason is, I own a MA12000 integrated amp which has an "upgradeable" DA2 build in. The DA2 DAC sound was decent. However, recently I bought the MCD12000 (SACD/Reference DAC), and the Reference DAC in the MCD12000 is way much better than the DA2 in the MA12000. So I was hoping I can purchase a McIntosh streamer which will run through the DAC in the MCD12000. Well, I will wait another year or so... maybe at that time, McIntosh will issue a Reference class streamer as either a transport only (to feed into the reference class DAC in my MCD12000 or a streamer with built-in Reference class DAC, so I can just use the balanced analog out into the MA12000 balanced analog in. |
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