It should be better than the playstation, even though many rave about them, and even I use one in a 5th system because I HAVE ONE, but the 550 is at least probably a decent player and let your ears decide.

You may decide that if the transport still works great that you may invenst in one of the new generation of affordable, high quality external dacs that are out now. The Musical fidelity V-DAC might be right up your alley.

Lieten for a week and tell us what you think. What you think matters way more than any of us.

Listening for a day, I can already hear the difference. It sounds great with the surround sound system, much better than the newer Toshiba dvd player I have, and much better than the playstation3. I can especially hear the difference in the bass, which comes through much more clearly and evenly. The only problem with the Sony is that it doesn't play burned CD's. I can live with that though.

Quick question about external DAC's and digital out and all that; when you connect something through a digital cable (coaxial, optical, HDMI) does that automatically bypass the internal DAC in the DVD player. It was my understanding that it did, but I read all the time in this forum how different DVD or CD players connected to an external DAC through the same digital cable sound different. It was my understanding that all players would sound the same once plugged in through a digital cable, as they become nothing more than transports. All of the conversion should go on in the external DAC, correct? Or am I mistaken?

I find it quite odd that any player in 2010 would not play CD-Rs.

Well the Sony DVP-S550D is from 1999

Yep, a lot of early DVD players did NOT play CD-Rs. Including my first unit the POS Panasonic DVD-300.

Quote:

Quick question about external DAC's and digital out and all that; when you connect something through a digital cable (coaxial, optical, HDMI) does that automatically bypass the internal DAC in the DVD player. It was my understanding that it did, but I read all the time in this forum how different DVD or CD players connected to an external DAC through the same digital cable sound different. It was my understanding that all players would sound the same once plugged in through a digital cable, as they become nothing more than transports. All of the conversion should go on in the external DAC, correct? Or am I mistaken?

The majority, from my understanding has to do with digital jitter. Jitter: In essence all of the "1" and "0" are present and in the correct order but the word clock that tells the DAC when to decode them is wrong. We're talking about fractions of a second here but our ears do pick up on it. Think of it this way. The world's best marching band all taking their time from a drummer with great rhythm vs. that same marching band with someone with no rhythmic sensibility. The musicians haven't changed, their instruments haven't changed, and the sheet music is still the same. But the rhythm won't be the same and things will start to sound sloppy and lax. Many of the new digital to analog converters are built specifically to reduce incoming jitter.