I myself have listened to many different dacs and all of them have about the same specs but the expensive ones tend to sound clearer with less distortion. Is there some other way to measure a dac quality other than price?
I myself have listened to many different dacs and all of them have about the same specs but the expensive ones tend to sound clearer with less distortion. Is there some other way to measure a dac quality other than price?
It is very hard to explain from an objective stand-point how devices that have nowadays reached lab-grade performance in accuracy can sound different from each other.
Yet, expensive equipment with with noise floors that barely allow for accurate 16-bit reproduction and distortion on audible levels (“euphonic”) is highly praised.
People who claim to hear remarkable differences among different well-performing DACs often disagree on “what sounds better than what” and they resort to insult because, of course, they must be right and who disagree with them must be “deaf”.
I believe bias from sighted listening plays a big part in all this. However I have no trouble believing that mildly noisy DACs with somewhat added euphonic distortion can sound different and capture some of the listener preferences out there.
Thanks. This was reasonable. People get very angry when you tell them that their 5k dac couldn’t barely give them CD reproduction and makes the whole idea of “high res sampling” ridiculous. The two channel crowd talks about synergy… As if audio is a mystic ritual that you perform.