Ted,
Is it possible to use FPGA for the trans coding (ie. FLAC to WAV trans coding) in the new Bridge?
I’m sorry but I’m not involved with the new bridge.
If you are asking if an FPGA could be used in principle, sure, but a fast general purpose processor would probably be more cost effective. Or one of the newer generation SOC.
You can put a Pentium in an FPGA, but Intel surely can build a cheaper one 
My vote goes to low power Intels as well 
MinimServer (and probably other servers) can transcode FLAC to WAV before sending the data off to the DAC-- that’s how I run my system. A good number of people find that this sounds better than having the DAC (or Bridge, in PSA’s case) do the transcoding. It’s not clear why this works in some systems. It will be interesting to hear whether server-side transcoding will still be better with Bridge II, assuming that it will have a faster processor and more memory than the original.
magister said: It will be interesting to hear whether server-side transcoding will still be better with Bridge II, assuming that it will have a faster processor and more memory than the original.
I still vote for the server-side transcoding. But I think that the DS will make upsampling unnecessary. Needs to be tested, though ;)
I do use transcoding in the server side, but I was wondering if using other hardware for the transcoding will make it better. Like dual core cpu and locking one core into that task.
Alekz said: But I think that the DS will make upsampling unnecessary. Needs to be tested, though ;)
I listened tonight to a Ray Charles SACD rip that some one sent me to test Flac vs WAVE of the same rip.
I expected to hear some kind of difference but I heard nothing that I could spot.
There are differences when comparing flac to dff/dsf which are to be expected given the different source resolutions.
Hard to test this securely at the end of a day though.