RE: OT: Optical and coaxial digital outputs for PCM, Dolby Digital, DTS and MPEG

["Phil Harris" <phillip.harris1@xxxxxxx>]

> Micromega are generally regarded as having put their effort
> into a great DAC and analogue output stage and a poorer
> transport. As such, if you're listening to it through a good
> quality set of analogue amps, it will really sing.
>
> If however, you're bypassing the DAC and analogue stages, and
> therefore using someone else's, then you're only using the
> poorer part of your CD player.

This implies that the DACs are "putting back" something that is
missing
in the original bitstream that is being passed to them. Therefore the
logical conclusion os this is surely to imply that the DACs are not
transparent and are imposing their own sonic character which in my books
would make them a bad DAC - no?

I love these discussions on good and bad digital transports ... Years
ago Meridian were making hugely heavy and battleship build transports
and I was having a heated debate with a mate that what they should do is
use a PC CD ROM drive and just buffer the hell out of the data if what
they were concerned about was jitter ... Now that supplies of the
"built
like a brick shithouse" Philips transports that they used to use have
dried up what are they doing? Using PC CD/DVD drives with buffers to
reclock the data!

Even their top of the line 800 series DVD player uses a standard DVD ROM
transport!

Remember : If it isn't pulled off the disc at the very start of the
chain then you can't hope to add it back in later...

Phil