This discussion has been very helpful. Just yesterday my friend loaned me his CD transport and I connected via coax to the Yggy. I could immediately discern a 'clearing up" of the sound. The transport was an old Marantz and I'm looking into other models now. This will mean rebuilding my CD collection too. I've also got a musical server connecting into the Yggy via optical. Yggy, what have you done !

After being repeatedly told (on the other forum) that, these days, pc audio is just as good as (or even better than) dedicated transports. It's refreshing for me to read that, around here, maybe not everyone feels this way.

Are there any discussions, anywhere, about alternative sources (particularly using flac or wav files), that I may have missed? If not, perhaps I'll start one myself.

After being repeatedly told (on the other forum) that, these days, pc audio is just as good as (or even better than) dedicated transports. It's refreshing for me to read that, around here, maybe not everyone feels this way.

Are there any discussions, anywhere, about alternative sources (particularly using flac or wav files), that I may have missed? If not, perhaps I'll start one myself.

Apart from the turntable thread, myself and a few others have talked about CD transports here and there. Many of the vintage ones are still untouchable compared to most modern units. I compared my own to a Cambridge Audio, Oppo, Tascam/TEAC, Marantz, PS audio PWT, and a few others. They all got spanked handily. The closest was Marv's Marantz which he modded. IT had great sound stage depth and layering, but less resolution bass, dynamics, etc. His might have had slightly sweeter vocals if I recall. The best modern CD transports I've heard were from Esoteric and Boulder. No matter who or what, USB has always lost to my ears. Ever...single...time. Let's not even talk about streaming 'lossless' audio. i keep hearing implementations of this stuff and it keeps getting better and better each year (Aries, and the really expensive streamer from the Korean company with the weird mediocre sounding DAP that's not AK/Cowon/Calyx), but not quite there yet. 

If I could get the audio quality from USB/PC equal to or better than spinning a CD platter or vinyl rig I would do just that. That's some tedious stuff. I don't think digital is inferior, just that it's messy and people either don't care, or aren't really trying because they are already biased by the bit-perfect '1's and '0's mentality. The people that actually are looking are still at the relative infancy of truly understanding all of it and how those parts relate to subjective listening.

That said, I'm still looking to investigate various options to bypass USB if I can ever get the freaking parts in stock.

But but... Atomic bob posted a jitter perfect measurement of usb3 ygg which ate USB cables...

So does that mean ygg will benefit from a quality USB ddc(aes) like offramp5 or hydra-z or berkley alpha?

Yes! If you read my review on the Yggy, I explicitly mentioned that, and preferred using a Lynx Hilo as an offramp to convert from USB>AES. Even with it, the transport was better via coax. This is why I've said that until somethig digital can come along and match or beat the best vinyl rigs out there, I really don't care that much anymore. If anyone prefers something about another DAC to the Yggy, it's a trade-off or side-grade in various aspects that I'm unwilling to make personally at this point. I mean I've compared the MSB platinum DAC using the same track versus my old PWD and the PWD was more resolving. The Yggy crushes my PWD in that regard. So to hear the Analog with this new USB input supposedly sound that amazing is somewhat miraculous to me.

For full disclosure, we compared the Yggy to shaizada's EAR DAC at his place and it was the worst DAC there when streaming from his MAC. It was awful and shocking by comparison (though I could still make out the better digital stage). We did the same comparison at the Brooks Berdan meet via coax and Marv's Marantz with the EAR being at best a side-grade (weaker digital D/S sound with superior tube output stage) with a slight majority favoring the Yggy (superior digital with inferior FET output stage.

So all these things matter. YMMV.

Anax, are you still using the same primary transport? I know you've mentioned that as your preference, but some of your thoughts are sparse and scattered across the site, so what exactly about it do you prefer or think it does better?

OK, so, treble could stand to be smoother sometimes. How does it compare in that aspect to some of the common USB->SPDIF converters? Is it just a smoothness issue or something deeper with overall tone, timbre, or general perceived frequency balance?