Update. The WD has been working very well, but I have discovered a small glitch in the analog audio output. Sometimes, there is an audible click/pop happening at the analog audio outputs just after the start of song playback - after something like 2 seconds so. It doesn’t happen every time - roughly one third of the time. It does not happen when the WD automatically proceeds on it’s own to play the next song in the current folder. It happens when re-starting the same song or selecting another song to play before the first has finished. The effect is more pronounced when the first few seconds of the recording is a quiet passage. When the music is quite active right at the start, the click is drowned out and much less noticeable. It probably wouldn’t bother most people. Note that this is using 16-bit / 44.1kHz FLAC files and I have not tried it with other formats.
The problem does not happen when using the optical S/PDIF output to an external DAC. I connected it to my NAD T760 home theatre receiver via the optical cable and simply could not reproduce the problem. The audio worked just fine in that case. As I had mentioned previously, it was always my plan to connect an external DAC. In the long run, I’m confident that the WD will perform as a solid digital audio streamer into the external DAC to provide the smooth audiophile conversion I seek.
-M
