Is DEQX a game changer?

Very interesting to hear the DAC function sounds at least as good as the ARC Ref CD 8--impressive! And it seems the preamp function is excellent as well. Do we have another OPPO here? Great usefulness and great value?

I have both digital and analogue sources going to the DEQX model HDP4.The digital sources run directly to the DEQX, and the analogue sources pass through a conventional preamp before going to the DEQX. There is really no reason to use a conventional preamp in addition to the HDP4 model, other than the increased number of inputs it affords. The preamp section in the HDP4 is of a very high quality, as are the A/D and D/A convertors.

For those who would contemplate learning how to do the calibrations themselves, make sure you have a lot of free time.

Quote: "Al, you and I are both old enough to know that some questions are best not asked. I'm "freeze tagging" on the DEQX's analogue functionality viz my phono. The thought that my Ref 5 SE could be an irrelevant artifact is too difficult to bear"

I am nearly 60 and although I also have around 4000 CDs, a few dozen SACDs and (at last count) around 54,000 (!?) mostly FLAC digital files (Rock, Hard Rock, Blues, Folk, Indie, Electronic, Folk) I still prefer Vinyl through my DEQX - 2 TTs via phono amps. 3 very fine preamps are now in other rooms or unused and will never be in the main system again

Drewan ...can I use the transport in my CD-8 to play SACD discs? I don't know what the bit/FR is with SACD or other high resolution discs. This is new territory for me. I think redbook CD is 16 bit/44.1 KHz. What is SACD?

What about hi-rez computer downloads? I have no idea what is out there.

09-26-14: Bifwynne
Drewan ...can I use the transport in my CD-8 to play SACD discs? I don't know what the bit/FR is with SACD or other high resolution discs. This is new territory for me. I think redbook CD is 16 bit/44.1 KHz. What is SACD?

SACD, as you know, stands for Super Audio CD.
It uses 1-bit DSD (direct stream digital) that is sampled at 2.8224MHz which is 64*44.1KHz. I.E. SACD is 64X oversampled compared to redbook CD.
SACD technology utilizes noise-shaping quantization techniques to recover the 20Hz-20KHz audio while at the same time pushing the unwanted noise to a higher/inaudible ultrasonic (to a human ear) frequencies. SACD, thus, almost always used delta-sigma demodulators to convert the 1-bit DSD stream to a 16-bit/20-bit/24-bit/32-bit recovered audio. The delta-sigma demodulator is digital circuit hence there is digital signal processing (DSP) done on the 1-bit DSD stream to recover the audio. The claim of SACD is that is supposedly provides a 120dB dynamic range (while 16-bit redbook CD has an upper limit of 96dB & signal processing done with 20-bit redbook also has a dynamic range of 120dB-same as SACD).
As you already know, to play a SACD disk, you need a player that is SACD capable - a redbook CD player cannot play SACDs.