How is the EMM Labs DCC2 as a stand alone DAC

What type of digital input are you going to use to feed the DCC2 - AES/EBU or coaxial. AES/EBU will be better. Either way, you will get great resolution and dynamics, but will still loose some of the special things the dcc2 does. I would say it is a very good stand alone dac. It surpassed my modified wadia 861 and MSB platinum dac even before I had a meitnerized transport. However, the CDSD will take it to another level. I hope that helps.

without a meitner transport, you won't be getting the full benefit of the dac, which is that the dac will clock the entire transport remotely, upsample all the cd data to dsd, and then send it back on two cables - one for data and one for the re-clocked signal.

The Meitner DAC is excellent when upsampling Redbook CDs, in my experience. I used it for a few months as a stand alone while waiting for the CDSD to arrive, with a Sony DVP-9000ES as transport. The CDSD with the DCC2 or DAC6e is a significant improvement, and IMO state of the (digital) art, as noted by the previous posters.

However, I was able to markedly improve the performance when using the Sony 9000ES, by first upsampling it's digital output with a Monarchy 48/96 unit, and then via the Monarchy's AES/EBU output to the Meitner DAC (as crazy as that sounds.) The Monarchy dejitters, upsamples, and also boosts the gain, (and the increased gain alone may be a big factor) but it was an across the board improvement. I had previously used the Monarchy 48/96 in the same manner, with a Theta Gen Va 24/96 DAC, to similar effect. To give proper credit, this method was suggested by Marty DeWulf in "Bound for Sound", and the upsampling/preconditioning of the digital signal before the DAC is a clear winner in my experience.

The Monarchy 48/96 has a coax and a toslink input, and a coax and AES/EBU output. Other upsamplers that can also be used in this way include the Camelot Dragon, (Marty DeWulf's favorite) and the Assemblage D2D1, both of which offer more types of digital ins and outs for digital format conversion as needed.

I will amend Gasman's comments slightly- it all depends on the dac. I also have an Assemblage D2D-1; have also used GW Labs DSP (similar to Monarchy). My 2-ch dac is the Audio Logic 24MXL, which was NOT improved by using jitter-reducing interfaces. It reclocks the data, and I am not sure if this makes a difference, but any jitter-reducer must be tested as an interface to each dac to see if it helps or hinders. That being said, the D2D-1 DOES work well with my HT dac- an Assemblage 3.1 Sig.

For a while, I used my Accuphase DP75V as a transport to
the DCC2 (via coax) & felt it was a substantial improvement to
the Accuphase by itself. It was smoother but with better
soundstage and definition.
This setup was no match for CDSD, however.