Memory Player vs Dedicated PC-TopUSB Conv and DAC

You hit the nail on the head. You'll find answers to your question in the "other" MP thread. I've never heard the MP so I can't comment, but I have an observation:

You obviously appreciate that simply connecting a PC to a DAC via AES/coax/toslink doesn't provide an even playing field. The PC should be tweaked to bypass Kmixer, bit-perfect ripping should be used (still waiting for a good answer as to how this is any different than RUR), the player software should not change the bit stream (all software upsamplers and many drivers change it, JRiver DirectSound and ASIO driver do not), a great USB converter (like Empirical Audio's) should be used, and the songs should be played from a RAM drive (i.e., from memory).

The posters did not mention whether they did any of this. IMO, they merely said the MP blew away the PC and that they knew what they were doing. I'm not convinced. I'd like to try it as a transport to find out.

There'll be a shootout at RMAF. Unfortunately, in the shootout, they'll use the internal DACs of the MP and other players. This will tell customers little about how good the players are as transports. Every DAC has a flavor--people will vote for the DAC they like. So, for customers who want to use the MP as a transport with the customer's existing DAC, the shootout won't help.

IMO, it would be great if Steve from Empirical Audio would participate in the shootout. Steve?...

BigAmp
Thanks for explaining it with all the intricacies, as you mentioned no one has gone deep into it and how different is RUR to the EAC software,etc...
And most importantly when should we guys stop investing in a transport? Has this median reached the stage that it betters the performance than the top mechanism/drives from Esoteric.

Your skeptisim is fine, but you should also consider that the Memory Player was not developed in a vacumme.

The MP developers knew about EAC, you have to consider that there is much more to the Memory Player than has been published about it. There are processes going on in the player after RUR which processes the data and helps create the Memory Player's sound.

As per optical transports like the Esoteric, yes they are dead in the water, Memory Play back is indeed better.