Here is the explanation of Duet VS the Transporter, both from Logitech.
The duet is the best Logitech streamer, I should say – the best sounding, and the best at what I need it for. Not the best in factory provided specs on the box for sure.
The Transporter inside has the same Realtek network LAN chip, the same Samsung memory RAM FIFO and the same firmware. Transporter has better PSU but my Duet again got much better PSU than the Transporter. The Transporter has sexy chassis and big display (nice) but that’s not about music.
The Transporter differs in the DAC chip department – instead of a low cost Wolfson they use medium quality AKM4396, which has higher specs than Wolfson so they can declare overall HI REZ compatibility. But when I use DUET as a transport only, this is irrelevant.
Long story short, I use only 2 chips from DUET , the LAN manager and fifo memory. Then the output is clocked by my own external clock with own clock transformer and own clock PSU and the clocked signal goes to the tube grid directly, where it is amplified and buffered and transmitted into the cable. The hi frequency radar tube makes perfect square wave and sends the squares to the DAC. In this configuration the SPDIF transmitting chip sees ZERO load and hence it behaves better (its life is made easier). That improves the music “feel”.
In Transporter the situation would be the same so why spending Eu 2K instead of 180 for the two necessary chips ?
The “Lampizator” Duet works much better on medium Rez files than stock Duet because there is no DAC chip involved (the bottleneck of resolution of the whole product) , no i2S signal, no internal clock crystal and no PSU accuracy issue. The PSU in LampizatOr is optimised to deliver the supply to Duet even at tens of magahertz of clean, noise free mode. So the hi-rez files (up to 96kHz/24Bit) are sounding MUCH better than Transporter or Touch files of 192/24 (as SPDIF transport). In fact every 44/16 file via my LampizatOr Transport sounds much better than the equivalent 192/24 file via Transporter or Touch (or Sonos, God forbid).
Of course a Mod Wright Transporter is overall a better player than stock Duet, but thats not the issue here, is it ?
Lukasz Fikus
LampizatOr
