Hi all. First post ever. Just dived into this fascinating rabbit hole a few weeks ago and trying to learn as fast as I can. Audiogon seems to be one of the best places to do this.
Sorry to take a perfectly intelligent question from the OP and make it unbelievably obtuse, but here's my confusion: a standard CD player (as opposed, I gather, to a pure "transport") must have a DAC, or something similar, built in, right? Otherwise how do the ones and zeros turn into an analog signal that feeds directly into the pre-amp/integrated/receiver? So if there's an analog signal coming out of the CD player...how does it make sense to run that signal into a standalone DAC? So there must be a separate output from the CD player that transmits an unconverted digital signal, bypassing the DAC (or whatever it is) inside the CD player, and this unconverted signal is what you would cable to the standalone DAC, thus making your CD player into a pure transport? I never noticed such an output on my 20-yr-old old Sony CD player, but I guess I never thought to look. Thanks for the education!
Sorry to take a perfectly intelligent question from the OP and make it unbelievably obtuse, but here's my confusion: a standard CD player (as opposed, I gather, to a pure "transport") must have a DAC, or something similar, built in, right? Otherwise how do the ones and zeros turn into an analog signal that feeds directly into the pre-amp/integrated/receiver? So if there's an analog signal coming out of the CD player...how does it make sense to run that signal into a standalone DAC? So there must be a separate output from the CD player that transmits an unconverted digital signal, bypassing the DAC (or whatever it is) inside the CD player, and this unconverted signal is what you would cable to the standalone DAC, thus making your CD player into a pure transport? I never noticed such an output on my 20-yr-old old Sony CD player, but I guess I never thought to look. Thanks for the education!