It's not just the DAC quality, but also the tone controls and volume control. Now while the BeoSound 3200 contains a very good DAC etc... as do all the BeoSounds, it's arguable that for speakers like the BeoLab 5s, you may want something of even higher quality, which is what the BeoLab 5 contains...

Exactly, although you can debate that impedance matching may play a small role in making sure every bit gets through.

I would want to integrate a BeoSystem 3, the difference in performance between the BeoSystem 1/2 and BeoSystem 3 is absolutely massive.

You could always mount a BeoSystem 3 on the back. This would handle any impedance matching for you.

Essentially, the BeoLab 5 is an entire hifi system contained within itself, with the exception of the bit which gets the 1s and 0s off the CD and into a wire. I'll outline what happens when you connect the speakers via PowerLink, and then Digital. With PowerLink: CD data > DAC in BeoSound > Tone Controls in BeoSound > Volume Control in

I wouldn't say you're losing a lot, but you do get a step up in performance if you use the digital connection as you're effectively 'bypassing' the sound circuitry in the BeoSound 3200 (most of which has a superior-quality equivalent within the BeoLab 5 itself, so becomes relatively pointless). I wouldn't look for 20% discount

RE the volume adjustment, this causes problems if listening to an album with continuous tracks, as not all tracks will be the same volume originally. If the BeoSound 5 adjusted the volume to always be the same, the end result would be unwanted jumps in volume between the tracks (classical music would suffer the most).

So you've finally bitten the bullet! When do they arrive?

Even if you did extract audio from a single core as opposed to both of them, the signal would be 6dB quieter than it's meant to be...

Agreed - a very good deal considering how new they are. The other thing to think about is, what are you going to connect them to?