Answering your specific question: When used as a xport, you remove the dac from signal path. I don't know if the power supply sees it any differently, but it might. At any rate [sorry] there is certainly no harm using your player this way, however, ARC might disagree ;\ The AL is a fine, fine dac, adn I wouldn't think reliability is an issue.
Have you done any comparisons, using the ARC by itself? As BK notes, that takes the cable out of the deal, and bypasses any jitter issues, though perhaps the ARC has pretty low jitter to begin with. And though the electronics reside in the box, I don't think there's any downside to having them in there but "not used". Good luck.
Have you done any comparisons, using the ARC by itself? As BK notes, that takes the cable out of the deal, and bypasses any jitter issues, though perhaps the ARC has pretty low jitter to begin with. And though the electronics reside in the box, I don't think there's any downside to having them in there but "not used". Good luck.