John,

I think perhaps im taking a pessimistic view whist you are being more optimistic. Like you, I havent seen actual data so it is hard to be conclusive.
High end cd transports....... there are actually alot of these about and there are plenty of people who use them...... hence it is a fraction confusing that they wouldnt actually be any much better!
To further my point..... i mentioned the sdi pannasonic which i own which has a top notch mpeg decoder (one of the best i am told). Compared to the arcam sdi, which i imagine cant have a much if superior at all, mpeg decoder, the experts conclude the arcam to be truly excellent, a step up from the panny. Assuming (again) that the arcam decoder isnt much better, the only difference should be due to the transport, surely?
In any case, i do follow your dvi arguement and it does make pretty good sense to me. I think we are just differing on the quality of data that a given transport can extract. this is an issue that has actually been done before. There are people who will use low end transports with much higher end dacs (for instance a pioneer dv717 with a tag dac20) who clearly believe as you do. Then there are the others (like me

) who see this as digital suicide and will have a much more balanced system. I actually dont recall reading any definitive blind testing.
Dont get me wrong, id love nothing more than having to pay only £200 for a dvd player almost as good as it gets and just feed it to an external processor, i just dont honestly think this is going to be the case! Even amongst the current crop of dvi type players, some are better than others..... it will be interesting to see if the meridian players will outclass the current machines...
ad
ps. oh and i didnt mean to come off as rude earlier (which i believe i was), so my apologies