Is the Transporter

Erndog,

I almost did but it was a little out of my $$ range and I've never had tubes so I was a little apprehensive. Would'nt a tube DAC give you the same effect?

Vincent, all things being equal (whatever that is!), the Wired4Sound DAC has volume controls and can connect directly to your amp without a preamp . . . in fact, that is the way it supposedly sounds best. I have not tried it yet as I am in the process of reconfiguring my system, have a couple of things out for repair, and need to first get things positioned right to try it.

In the meantime, it seems the issue is how the DAC in the Transporter compares to an outboard DAC and whether there are any other differences the Transporter offers over the Squeezebox and an outboard DAC.

Thanks Ncarv, The fact that the W4S DAC can (and should?) work without a preamp is pretty huge. Since I only have digital sources in my set up that would work. Also, I have always beleived that the fewer intermediate steps (and D/A and A/D conversion) done the better.

Any feedback from people using the W4S DAC without a pre?
Any other preampless (?) options?

Based on my own experience and past research I think the transporter has certain features that allow it to potentialy offer better SQ then the less fancy alternatives previously mentioned such as the SB3/Touch and Sonoos

For me, the fact that the Transporter came with balanced and AES/EBU outputs was a huge plus over the other options at the time. I also believe it offers superior wireless streaming performance, especially with high Rez files. I think it has a faster processor and more ram then the other SB devices to help reduce dropouts (which I have never experienced anyway). This doesn't really matter to me much though as I have since moved to hard wired because I feel it sounds better in my system.

I run my SBT into a BelCanto DAC3 via AES/EBU then I feed my amp directly from the XLR Balanced outputs of the BelCanto. I have no complaints and feel no need to upgrade at this point.

If I had to do it over again I would purchase the new Bryston media player and feed it to my BelCanto or similar DAC/PRE and call it a day

Thanks Eniac. A Bryston BDP-1/BDA-1/Bel Canto combo fed by a SB would be a great set up. I use a Bryston amp already. I do need the wireless capability for my situation though.

Do you prefer the sound of the Bel Canto DAC over that of the Transporter or do you need the DAC3 as a preamp?