Separate Transport & DAC: Why not?

The best digital setups that I have heard have all been separates, except for the Exemplar Denon 2900 which is an oustanding one box modded player. In general I don't buy the less is more argument in this case because it does not ring true with my experience. I'd say it has to do more with the overall design of the components than the simplicity of the path. Using a separate DAC and transport is more expensive and real estate intensive, but each component can be tailored more precisely to its needs.

That said, it's very nice to have a great one box player for the simplicity and I wish they all were!

For the past four years I've only used separate transports and DACs because I liked the flexibility of being able to change DACs and cables whenever I found something that I thought might work better.

Lately I've had my eye on the different modified one-box Denon and Sony universal players from APL, eXemplar and Modwright.

Bottom line, you'll get many different opinions, but there are many quality choices no matter which path you choose.

In addition to real estate and cost of a digital cable, there are also potential jitter problems. Some solve that with a dejitterer ;-) but now you've got 3 boxes and 2 digital cables. I know that I tried that route and eventually went back to a one-box.

The power supply and space to do it right are advantages of separate DAC. It can also be battery-powered. Tough to do this with a player. Also, a DAC is an easy transition to computer-driven audio, which can be superior to ANY player and actually more convenient.