Keep in mind that the actual electrical signal carrying the data from the transport to the DAC is an analog signal that is sampled at intervals by the DAC. Any corruption of this analog waveform will alter what the DAC "sees" on the link, especially the signal timing, the width of the pulses and the voltage during the sampling windows. Any variations in these can produce jitter (timing variations) in the recovered signal. This amounts to a transformation of amplitude variations in the analog signal to frequency changes in the digital signal. A lot of work has gone into minimizing these effects, but we're still not all the way there yet. For instance, the quality of the transport's power supply will have an effect on the accuracy of that analog signal carrying the encoded bitstream. Think of the output stage of the transport as the output stage of an ultra-high frequency preamp, and you'll start to get the picture. There's a lot more involved than the 1's and 0's.
I use a kick-ass DAC by anybody's measure, an Audio Note 4.1x Balanced Signature worth over $20K, and it makes the sonic defferences between transports and digital interconnects all the more more obvious. I recently upgraded my transport and interconnect from a a $5K combo to a $10K combo, and the improvement was striking.
I use a kick-ass DAC by anybody's measure, an Audio Note 4.1x Balanced Signature worth over $20K, and it makes the sonic defferences between transports and digital interconnects all the more more obvious. I recently upgraded my transport and interconnect from a a $5K combo to a $10K combo, and the improvement was striking.