I'm considering a Transporter as a source upgrade in the not so near future and I was just wondering if anyone here has heard the Modwright modded Transporter? Dan Wright sent one to CanJam but I didn't get a chance to really listen to it.

I did play around with Grahame's stock Transporter and liked it but wasn't sure if it was playing by itself or if it was hooked up to Al's Amarra. Any opinion or impressions would be greatly appreciated!

Can't say I've heard the Modwright Transporter but I was extremely happy with the Modwright 9100ES and Modwright SWL9.0 when I owned them.

Well...

The transporter was serving up redbook flacs off a netbook hiding behind Al's Mac Stack. When the Modwright Transporter turned up, I added it to the system, and synced it with the stock Transporter. Outputs then went to Al's Luxman P1 allowing comparison. Not a direct comparison as we used the stock SE output, and the balanced output on the Modwright. Initial differences were more subtle when volume matched the outputs by lowering the volume on the Modright by some 10 dB.

Differences at that point under meet conditions ...

They both sounded nice to me (thanks to the HD-800's and P1 ).

Modright had a more "tubey" signature to to its output, which I guess is the intent of the mod, so in that respect it succeeded. Which signature sounds better to you, given the relative costs, is a matter of individual preference.

The mod seemed well executed, and added substantial physical mass to the Transporter.

The Transporter has a 30-day satisfaction guarantee from Logitech so you can have an extended try before you buy. It may be worth getting a system set up in advance if you don't already have the software etc, to maximize your usable time with it. that said the Transporter can be used just as a DAC as it has Optical, coax, BNC, and XLR digital connectors

(no usb as that's missing the point )

Given the prices at this level, some people are happy with an SB3 + external DAC . You could always use a tube preamp / headphone amp if that's where your interests lie.

One advantage of the transporter over the SB3 is that the transporter will stream 24/96 but the SB3 will not.

Correct, although on the latest versions of the server software, it will downsample to 24/48 using sox in software for output to the SB 3. As it happens I'm listening to some 24/88.2 material on the Transporter at the moment. And very nice it is too!