If hooked up to an external DAC and all it does is transporting 1s and 0s digitally, how can that affect Soundstage, how punchy the bass is, etc?
If hooked up to an external DAC and all it does is transporting 1s and 0s digitally, how can that affect Soundstage, how punchy the bass is, etc?
Well, it shouldn’t affect anything. Even basic DACs these days should be good enough to achieve transparency. Words like soundstage, punchy bass, etc. mean little to nothing. It is either measurable as changes in frequency response, harmonic distortion, or something such that is actually quantifiable, or it is probably just pure placebo.