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Sean Adams conceded that a long time ago on the SB forums, but I only recently signed up so wasn't aware of that fact. However it still doesn't change my opinion of how it performs in my system. But you're certainly right about the XLR plugs not being 110 ohm, and maybe someone someday will be able to make one.
Yeah, it would be a lot of fun if we could compare the two (or even just hang out and shoot the s***). I'd love to see how they stack up against each other. Some mods I find beneficial, and others I just feel will change the tonality of the unit which is really not what I'm trying to achieve. A source/transport is one of those things though where you really never know until you do it, since it is only providing the digital signal to the DAC. But upgrades to clock and power supply are the single best things you can do for a transport. It also seems to be more sensitive to power cords/receptacles than any other piece of gear in the chain.
Most interconnect or power cord swaps will yield relatively small improvements/differences, and some will argue that it's all placebo which I am certainly not ruling out. The brain is a strange and mysterious thing. However there was one swap I did before I modded the Transporter and it was so ridiculously noticeable even I couldn't believe it. I keep my best power cord on my Transporter, the VD Master LE 2.0 which is where it truly belongs. I felt it sounded best plugged directly into the wall instead of my Power Plant Premier.
Then I upgraded my wall receptacle to a PS Audio Power Port Premier from a stock one. The sound coming out of my system at that point was so harsh in the treble it was literally hurting my ears, so this was nothing that could be classified as placebo since it was physically hurting me. I had to plug my cord into the PPP from that point on, which not only fixed that issue but showed that the new receptacle made an improvement over the stock one.
I'm not sure why transports are as sensitive as they are to changes in power related parts, but it's something I've noticed on any transport I've ever tried. Since modding the Transporter though, there are no such issues any more and changing power cords is much less noticeable.
I had also forgot to mention that building a balanced digital cable is another major hurdle vs the single conductor 75 ohm COAX. The geometry of the balanced (usually a twisted pair of conductors for plus minus and the mesh shield used for the GND run) changes the inductance/capacitance parameters vs the 75 ohm coax. IIRC twisted pair (tight & uniform ) will drop inductance but increase capacitance which will likely effect resistance or effect the ability of the cable to remain at 110 ohm......add to that the connection option (solder or cold weld/press fit) of the conductors to the XLR jack pins and the impedance may drift even further from the ideal. Termination of 110 and 75 ohm digital cables is critical (which is why it's one of few the jobs I leave to the pros, if the cable is built from raw materials like the Furutech I have) The other big turn off for me WRT 110 ohm AES is the expense. These cables can quickly get into the ridiculous range (ridiculous for me at least) so can the 75 ohm variants although for the 150 -350 dollar range there is a wide variety of high quality (75 ohm) choices available. I can't think of a single pure silver AES cable under 400 USD for a 1 meter length off hand with many of them starting in my self imposed "ridiculous range" for cables no matter where they are used. The only exception I've made in this regard was for my ref system's speaker cables. The Nordost flat-line series (Blue Heaven II shotgun runs) clearly outperformed my previous cables of choice (AudioQuest Mammoth, MIT MH-750+ Series II, XLO Ultra 6 -10, DIY OFC 12 gage stranded braided similar to recipe of CAT 5 DIY, J Risch DIY Belden 89259 cross connect) so that is what I've run with for a few years now. I'm sure there are better cables than the the BH II's but for me I'd rather sink the $$$ into other areas (like parts for mods or higher quality DIY IC's than my current mix of MIT IC's, which are mighty fine performers in their own right). Going to solid silver cabling in my system would be very very expensive even if I DIY every single cable. Likely looking at 3-5K if a I switch from single ended to balanced to the various amps, room correction processor and xover. I'm lucky that all of my current amps can accept XLR...the main impediment to going that route is finding a high quality analog xover that has balanced and single ended I/O. So far the only xover that I know of worthy of consideration is a custom built Marchand unit which is
very expensive.All of the Pro gear boxes I've looked at leave a lot to be desired, the ones that do look promising convert the signal to the digital domain, something which I have zero interest in. The DBX units operate in the digital domain ...it's too bad since they have some powerful and very useful features an analog xover cannot touch. Being a purist however I can't except the additional ADC/DAC step in the most crucial stage of the system chain (outside of source quality), the stage between the preamp and the amps/processor and xover. The room processor operates in the digital domain (ADC/DAC step) but it only effects the sub channels from 60 hz on down, it doesn't touch the rest of the freq range. The PARC processor is reportedly of high enough quality for my purposes but we run into that price range at or above what the Marchand would cost. Sigh...Does anyone know of an active balanced analog xover DIY design I could look at ?
Anyway there is no disputing the fact that a server based source is far more convenient with leaps in performance progressing at a steady rate. I certainly hope that in the future we can finally have a definitive server source that is a clear cut above traditional spinners, until that happens I will remain with the stand alone transport as my reference.There is one drawback to having so much variety of music at your fingertips I've discovered (it may not effect others)....I find myself skipping songs, skipping entire albums...it's like a compulsion of sorts ( a negative one). For me though it interrupts the flow of or the intended purpose of the recording as a whole as the artists intended (or as the artist has conceived the sequence of the work). In that sense having the physical disc in the transport relieves me of the urge to skip a song or listen to a song out if sequence partly because I'm lazy but for the most part having to change means getting another disc off the shelf so in a way I'm passively forced to listen to entire discs. It's like listening to The Wall with shuffle on...it's not the same experience. Also having the monitor in front of your face close at hand to the keyboard/mouse does not allow one (or me at least) to fully concentrate on the music, sounds a bit silly I know but for some reason I'm easily distracted by the computer and will fidget/surf/read what have you. I suppose it's the reason why I'm satisfied with the FUN/C-2C combo when on the computer. It's funny how variety , ease of operation can combine to be a negative (in my case)...maybe the younger generation have an advantage here as my habits center around hard copies (vinyl/CD/tape) for years before computers even came into existence, let alone used as serious front ends to a high resolution music system.
Isn't it interesting how much swapping out an outlet (and running dedicated lines in my case) can influence the overall sound quality of your gear. I went with cryo'd ACME 20 amp duplex x 2 in conjunction with 10-3 Romex and Siemens heavy duty 20 amp breakers (for use with a 15 amp gear. I wanted to have extra headroom in the lines as far as wattage rating and current rating, I did not want to max the capacity but rather run the circuit in a comfortable range of roughly 70% load of capacity rather than 95% on 15 amp circuits. I also run my power amps directly from the wall outlets but all the low power stuff is behind a line conditioner (analog separated from digital gear). I hope to have a PPP unit within the next year or 2 depending on how quickly I can save up the money for one...I may get a used unit if I can.
Having a direct comparison would be a hoot PJ......maybe someday we'll have our gear at a CanJam. I know for certain you would love the MAX mod results, the gear really is another animal entirely compared to stock (none of the changes are negative either all 100% positive steps in the right direction). All of the drawbacks noted by other members WRT stock REF series are addressed (and then some) with the MAX mods (which roll up all of the other mods previously performed for brevity's sake ).
I realize I need to get myself a V5 DSP for the RE1 but I simply cannot afford to do so for now ( until the Marshall half stack and the Gibby Les Paul Custom are sold I'm stuck in neutral ).
Sorry for the semi OT slightly relevant post admins/fellow members ....
Interesting little fact: the new MASTER series products use the Nucleotide OCC copper wire by default.