What’s a stinkin’ PC have to do with the fact that the best sounding CD drives are all in transports? And only use a PC for ripping tracks if you want to avoid years of learning.
It's not about A vs B, it's about musical enjoyment
transport/dac vs integrated player
I have almost always used an outboard dac, primarily because it always sounded much better, presumably because the external dac was better than my cd players internal dac. I have always concentrated on the dac and not on the quality of the transport, and planned on trying better transports and also playing via computer with a usb to s/pdif bridge. The question I have is this: assuming the dac in an integrated player equals the sound quality of an external dac, does the fact that it is in the player itself alleviate any issues with the connection from a transport to an external dac? To put it another way, assuming all things being equal, am I better off seeking out a player rather than a separate transport /dac? Thanks in advance.