How good of a DAC is the Logitech Transporter

this is a great thread and mirrors kind of where i am at in the process. jglim's description above of the congestion from his sb3 is similar to what i get running digital out from sb duet to theta casanova. because of this, i have been considering upgrading to the transporter or another dac. i think it is just the limitations of the sb. i do have a pretty revealing system.

rich-were you stating the digital out of the transporter is significantly better than the digital out on the sb?

Hi Richard,
I have people telling me that the Weiss Minerva DAC is a good device to consider, which allows output via firewire from the MAC to the DAC. But at just under $5000 its a pretty expensive option especially for those of us who already own a good DAC. The transporter is also not cheap and if used purely for streaming seems to be wasting the DACs in it.

So I too am still looking for a good solution to replace my CD transport but not my DAC.

jglim...that would be a pricey solution (the weiss dac) and out of my range at this point but the transporter is within reach. i just wonder how much f an upgrade it would be. i have gotten allot of conflicting input regarding transporter dac vs theta+sb vs theta + transporter vs external dac...tough choice with all the options. i just know i am not satisfied with the sound i am getting with my sb + theta...

From my reading of other people's reviews (no personal experience with transporter myself), the use of the transporter seems to outperform a DAC in the 2-3K region. It is probably a bit unfair to compare it to the weiss combo as it is a lot more costly and retrieves details that leaves a lot of lower end CD players behind as well.

My disappointment was with the inability to stream music via the SB3 that in theory should have significant advantage over any cd player that has to do real time reading of disc and error coding.

Hi Guys,

I haven't listened to the Squeezebox 3 in my main rig for about 1 year and at that time I was using a Bel Canto DAC3 with the Transporter for the comparison, so this morning I hooked the Squeezebox up to my MBL 1611F DAC using a $40 optical monster cable, that I had borrowed from my MacPro and the Transporter was sporting a Kubala-Sosna 110 ohm AES/EBU Digital Cable and a Zu Audio Bok power cable.

I'm sure that we have all read the same threads claiming that the Squeezebox is as good as the Transporter is, if you're using an external DAC. Well, gentleman, after listening to the squeezebox this morning through some very expensive gear, I'm hear to say that you're both right, the squeezebox sounds terrible. In audiophile terms the squeezebox is lacking in; resolution, transparency, ambience, dynamics, harmonics, decay and PRAT and it's not even close. The Transporter blew the Squeezebox out of the water just like the shark was blown out of the water in the first Jaws Movie. So, this is what the Transporter is capable of when using an upgraded power cable and a high quality balanced digital interconnect.

So to be fair, I then used the cheapo monster cable hooked up to the MBL DAC and the Transporter just to see how much of the difference was attributed to the Cable and how much was attributed to the the different streamers. Well, let me tell you that the audiophile improvements followed the Transporter however, not nearly to the same degree while using the Kubala Digital Cable. I would also like to point out that the optical monster cable is terrible, however I didn't have a long enough 75ohm Digital SPDIF cable to reach all of the equipment in question.

I could also tell you that, you will be further rewarded when using a high quality balanced digital 110 ohm cable and upgraded power cable. In the past, I have also had great results with the relatively inexpensive ZU Audio Ash 110 ohm AES/EBU digital cable.

There is a website that talks about the Audio MIDI setup for the MAC and iTunes, which I will look for. But the consensus is that you must have the Digital Volume on your MAC fixed at the Maximum Volume. So, go into your MAC Applications folder, click on the Utilities folder, then click on the Audio MIDI Setup, then choose the Audio Devices tab, then under the PROPERTIES FOR pulldown; select built-in Digital Output, then under Audio output on the bottom right side, I have selected source: Digital Out, 96khz 2ch-24bit, (keep in mind that these format settings are only as good as the quality of your source music files) I believe your settings for DEFAULT OUTPUT AND SYSTEM OUTPUT, should be Built-in Line output if you have external speakers hooked up to your MAC.

These settings will fix your Volume Control to max, so that you will not clip any digital bits with the MAC's digital volume control. You have to restart iTunes for these settings to take effect.

Let me know how it goes.

Rich