To reply to Paladin's question in another way. Why should you care about which DAC you are using? A $100 CD player probably does not have DACs and output stages as good as the current Outlaw models (or most other good modern gear). Where it starts getting tricky is that some slightly more expensive transports have some darn good DACs and output amps. But how good the DACs are isn't the important part unless one unit or the other is much better. The digital cables are usually less susceptible to loss and noise so they do a better job of getting the signal to your pre-amp/processor/reeceiver, and you have a lot more control and options in your receiver as to what you can do with a signal in the digital domain. In fact, on the Outlaw 990, unless you bypass everything, you end up re-digitizing analog inputs. So you are usually a lot better off using your player's digital out as described by Gonk. You just avoid one DA/AD conversion.

Now we could open another can of worms by starting a thread about whether any one can hear audible degradation from one additional good quality AD/DA stage. I have always taken it as a given that one avoids them because they degrade the sound--everyone says so. But I have never tested it myself. Has anyone here tried to test this or know of a good reference?