Music Server with no DAC?

Overall I agree with what you are getting at - and you'll love this - to prove your point I have bought a Beresford for my AV DAC needs which at $250 (a far cry from 5k) is probably at the 90% or even 95% level of anything available in 2000... While not matching CD output from my MF A5 it is quite quite stunning in what it can do for $250.

Hey - just for fun (I mean it, just for fun!) lets agree to respond to this thread in 5 years and see how much it costs to get to the quality of the Berkeley Alpha DAC. There might be some whole other approach, using nano-something by then that might even be much less than 1.5k...

And btw, I absolutely love my $250 TC-7520 Beresford and I have started to enjoy it several weeks ago when I got it! :) (The beginning of certain shows like House or Medium - the music is amazing when put through the Beresford comapared to AV without an external DAC.)

Lightminer- I think your thinking is colored by the price of a stand-alone DAC. The MW already has a case, power supply, inputs and outputs, product distribution/marketing, streaming software and hardware, and R&D built into the cost. If you eliminate the DAC your costs probably don't decline by more than $100 and I bet is quite a bit less than that (I will admit that this is rank speculation, so if anyone knows what the bulk cost of the DAC chips and assembly might reasonably be, please chime in). So the question is, if you can provide a very good quality one box solution of $2K (list), will people spend $1.9K in order to have the option of adding a DAC, with extra cabling and maybe a de-jitter device.

Please don't get me wrong, I do like the idea of a modular product w different options. Of course the "differences" between many of the DACs you are talking about could and probably does, have lots to do with better implementation of power supplies, analog stages, etc, as well as to a "better" digital to analog conversion per se.

Yeah, I agree. We'd have to know what % it is... And that is indeed the crux of the argument!

If it is incrementally (assuming one already wants the rest of the device, which is an assumption we are making) not a high % to add it to what exists as the rest of the machine, then all is good in the world just as it is right now :). If it is a high or medium % of the total price, then I suggest the things I suggest above, such as same product with no DAC and/or upgradeable DAC boards, etc. etc.

Oh - and agreed to your last sentence, which makes the issue more complex as well... It, by degree, minimizes the importance of the actual DAC chip and whatever other ICs are there right around it to support the process.

Similarly, I like the idea of the Logitech Transporter, but how about no DAC and drop the price in half or a bit more? Just have AES/EBU, S/PDIF and maybe optical out...

Lightminer, you can always buy the Squeezebox 3 (aka Classic) for $300 and pretty much have the same funtionality of the Transporter at significantly less expense. If you intend to use the digital out into a DAC, the Transporter is overkill, IMHO.