Okay so I hooked up the analog outputs of the Squeezebox Touch to my main audio system (Sim Audio Moon pre-amp and power amp, Vandersteen Model 3A Signatures and Vandersteen sub-woofer) to compare against the Squeezebox Transporter. The Touch has only single ended outputs whereas the Transporter has both single ended and balanced analog outputs. I am using the balance outputs for the Transporter.
My initial impressions are that the Touch compares quite favorably with the Transporter with the Transporter having just a slight edge in overall clarity and air. You know the standard audiophile reviewer mumbo jumbo of things like "blacker silences" and that old standby "one less window between you and the original music". Bu really the differences are very slight and may only be the result of the single ended versus the balanced connections.
Furthermore it's a no-brainer that when using the Touch as a digital transport with one of the Touch's digital outputs going to an external DAC, particularly since the Touch supports streaming of 24 bit/96 kHz files, one is going to get first rate sound.
Right now I'm listening to the 24/96 version of Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand and the gap between the Touch and Transporter is even narrower with the high resolution material. One thing the Transporter does better is lock onto the wireless signal since it has two antennas. The Touch was doing quite a bit of re-buffering whereas the Transporter was not. I'm pretty sure that using a wired Ethernet connection would resolve this issue. The re-buffering was only happening when playing back high resolution files. I stream the files as flac rather than wav.
As I stated in another post, with a $300 list price the Touch is really going to shake things up in the world of digital audio. JA get one of these marvelous units out to a Stereophile reviewer ASAP, please!
Okay so I hooked up the analog outputs of the Squeezebox Touch to my main audio system (Sim Audio Moon pre-amp and power amp, Vandersteen Model 3A Signatures and Vandersteen sub-woofer) to compare against the Squeezebox Transporter. The Touch has only single ended outputs whereas the Transporter has both single ended and balanced analog outputs. I am using the balance outputs for the Transporter.
My initial impressions are that the Touch compares quite favorably with the Transporter with the Transporter having just a slight edge in overall clarity and air. You know the standard audiophile reviewer mumbo jumbo of things like "blacker silences" and that old standby "one less window between you and the original music". Bu really the differences are very slight and may only be the result of the single ended versus the balanced connections.
Furthermore it's a no-brainer that when using the Touch as a digital transport with one of the Touch's digital outputs going to an external DAC, particularly since the Touch supports streaming of 24 bit/96 kHz files, one is going to get first rate sound.
Right now I'm listening to the 24/96 version of Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand and the gap between the Touch and Transporter is even narrower with the high resolution material. One thing the Transporter does better is lock onto the wireless signal since it has two antennas. The Touch was doing quite a bit of re-buffering whereas the Transporter was not. I'm pretty sure that using a wired Ethernet connection would resolve this issue. The re-buffering was only happening when playing back high resolution files. I stream the files as flac rather than wav.
As I stated in another post, with a $300 list price the Touch is really going to shake things up in the world of digital audio. JA get one of these marvelous units out to a Stereophile reviewer ASAP, please!