What is Jitter? is an interesting read and offers a good reason for why transports sound so different.
I have setup a computer transport with great success. Its easy to get started but more effort/learning is needed to get best performance. After comparing my setup with some exotic (& very expensive) front-ends (Wadia 9 series, Esoteric P03/D03 & MBL Ref trans/DAC), I don't have a need to upgrade. Sound is superior to Wadia (bad dealer setup most likely here) & Esoteric (detailed but lacks musicality). MBL was excellent and couldn't be faulted but I don't need it.
It seems that computers are far better at upsampling than hardware based algorithms within a transport and/or dac. Upsampling after all is a computing function and doing it correctly, needs lots of processing power.
I have setup a computer transport with great success. Its easy to get started but more effort/learning is needed to get best performance. After comparing my setup with some exotic (& very expensive) front-ends (Wadia 9 series, Esoteric P03/D03 & MBL Ref trans/DAC), I don't have a need to upgrade. Sound is superior to Wadia (bad dealer setup most likely here) & Esoteric (detailed but lacks musicality). MBL was excellent and couldn't be faulted but I don't need it.
It seems that computers are far better at upsampling than hardware based algorithms within a transport and/or dac. Upsampling after all is a computing function and doing it correctly, needs lots of processing power.