New streamer needed

@riccitone No worries, I am not offended by anyone who is trying to help. I can appreciate that.

@mdalton I guess the W4S version you have tried will have been similar to mine, though mine didn't have an internal dac. Upgrading my external dac to the Merason was a big improvement, but nothing compared to after having hooked up my Accuphase transport. The sound just 'feels right'.

@audphile1 Great suggestions. The Merason dac with power supply is +2000 so that is a good starting point to try a few you mentioned. The internal dac of the Accuphase is also not bad at all, but the Merason sounds better to me. The ultimate aim, of course, is to replace the player with an at least similar sounding streamer, including internal SSD to store my own CDs. It may take while before I get there.

@stievus 

Sorry, I wasn’t clear.  The W4S modified Sonos bypassed the internal DAC just like yours.  So my comparison was of a stock sonos with digital out to benchmark, vs modified sonos out to benchmark.  The dac’s sound dominated, which is what Benchmark would predict.  

One other point of clarification.  It appears that your modified Sonos was upsampling to 192k, so your nos dac takes that and outputs 192k I assume.  But the Accuohase CD transport is 16 bit 44.1k limited, so if I understand your dac, it’s outputting 44.1k in that case.  So those two should sound very different, I think.

@stievus 

Sorry, I wasn’t clear.  The W4S modified Sonos bypassed the internal DAC just like yours.  So my comparison was of a stock sonos with digital out to benchmark, vs modified sonos out to benchmark.  The dac’s sound dominated, which is what Benchmark would predict.  

One other point of clarification.  It appears that your modified Sonos was upsampling to 192k, so your nos dac takes that and outputs 192k I assume.  But the Accuohase CD transport is 16 bit 44.1k limited, so if I understand your dac, it’s outputting 44.1k in that case.  So those two should sound very different, I think.

in other words, I don’t think you’re hearing the streamer, I think you’re hearing the upsampling, which you don’t like.  am guessing the cd transport sounds more natural to you, but just a guess.

Might be true, I don't know. I like(d) my streamer but it doesn't function anymore, so that's why I need a new one. Bottom line is that I am trying to find one now that comes close to what I hear/like from my CD transport. That's all.