Originally Posted by Anders Vinberg
And this all made the story sound credible to me: the basic idea is always to feed the bits into the DAC, but some of the Sooloos devices do a better job of signal processing, particularly through apodising. And the argument I heard was that the ID40 and the DS600 were the most advanced, so if you don't have an 808 or 861 the DS600 is the sweet spot of price.

....


MC200: I had this belief in the higher SQ, and I wanted more storage. So MS600+MD600 it was.
Thanks Anders - My view is that it's possible that there is no difference in unbalanced analogue out and digital out between MC200 and MS600. The MC200 and MS600 both have apodising upsampling and the MC200 is the more recent product. As far as I can see the only difference on outputs is that the the MS600 has balanced analogue. An MC200 + MD600 would probably give you all you need including SQ (and a system core). I can't be sure about this because I haven't heard the MS600 and MC200 analogue outs side by side but it owuld be worth a listen. Alternatively, as Ronnie has said, an MC200 will give you a system core and a superb second zone with apodising upsampling - and I can be sure about that because I'm using the analogue zone on my MC200 as well as using it as a core and it sounds fantastic - the system it's driving has never sounded as good before.

MC200, Twinstore, 808v6/ID41 -> DSP8000SE (+ SB Touch, Sony BDP-3300, SKYHD, legacy cassette player)
2nd system: MC200 analogue out, Linn LP12, SB3 -> Quad 34 -> M60 rosewood
F80 (Rubino Micallizzato)
F80 (Rosso Corsa)