Stand alone dac vs built in dac what's the better

Audiofreak, shouldn't you have said in your opinion, "A Linn DS unit will simply trash most CD players, I've heard the DS many times at a friends and even brought it home for a try. It wasn't even close to a mid priced CD player, very sterile sounding, in my opinion.
I 'm not sure why a hard drive music server was even brought into this post.

I find that for a lot of systems, synergy is more important than whether the DAC is integrated with the transport or on an external box.

I use a Bel Canto DAC3.5VB MkII (upgraded from a Mk I) along with a Bel Canto CD2. I found that the combo sounds very very good together. Better than when I use another brand CDPro2M transport feeding the same DAC.

Similarly, my Ayon CD5S which is a one box CD transport/DAC and preamp sounds better with its internal transport, vs an external transport.

Both have advantages, it depends on what you looking for.

Jitter is reduced or eliminated with a proper clock mechanism. In my opinion, most DACs suffer from something that most of you are aware of for pre-amps but don't apply to DACs and that is the power supply. most internal DACS have a mediocre power supply and therefore the system reponse in inadequate compared to external DACs. Although I have seen external DACs that have terrible power supplies also. Most DAC manufactures are great on the digital side but totally are lost on the analog/power supply side. Look at the major, realy great DACs out there and you will find a really high-end heavy duty power supply inside. Which is not shared with all the other stuff inside a CD player. I was sold on external DACs long ago when I compared several CD/DVD players using analog output and then ran the digital output to some really good heavy duty external DACs. Not even close. external DAC/CD transports won ever time. My advice, go borrow a really decent used DAC like a Theta DS Pro Gen Va and run your existing CD player's digital output into the DAC, then into your pre-amp, and also run the CD player's analog out into the pre-amp also and A/B compare them. you will hear an amazing difference.

enjoy