Originally Posted by Dpaws
I may have missed the follow up posting - but what was the outcome of the breakfast meeting with Bob?

I'm curious regarding the technical quality of the MS600 digital out in relation to the 8xx/ID40 options. Certainly from the internal photos the two alternatives appear to share the same chip architecture.

I've noted that various contributors here have suggested that the ID40 is superior to the MS600. Conversely I've read an independent mainstream review (somewhere) that suggests that, via the digital output, the audio from these units is indistinguishable...

The MS600 casing would appear to have a lot of spare real estate for a highly regulated linear power supply.
+1 I would be interested to know what transpired in that conversation.

Note that since this thread first started I've moved to a NuForce DAC9 which has been shown (by me and others) to have even better transducing properties than the Turbo Mod (Empirical Audio) Benchmark DAC1. The audio from most CDs via FLAC on Sooloos MS600 is superb.

I never thought I'd hear better AQ than I was getting from the modded Benchmark, but have been proven wrong. So what else is out there that would sound even better? Who knows. But I really MUST stop buying these toys. The music via the present set up, using headphones, is enthralling so there seems little point in contemplating any more "upgrades" (which can often be more sideways moves than up).

John