I’ve seen people state both that they so not influence the tuning as long as they deliver the same power and others stating that they can make headphones “sound warmer” or “brighter”. I don’t see how that would happen though and a lot of audiophiles just hear things that I feel aren’t there, like some noise difference between the Apple DAC Dongle and a 500 EUR DAC using an off the rack chip.
Take this comment from ASR:
Amps are more likely to make an audible difference than most DACs, but that certainly doesn’t mean there are audible differences between most amps
I’m talking purely about AMPs here, not a DAC combination.
How about the difference between DACs that use R2R oversampling versus no oversampling? Is this marketing speak or is there a perceivable difference?
That’s not something I’ve specifically done A/B testing on, but in my experience testing various DACs, I can’t tell any difference between them (except for the very bottom end).
Even $200 DACs have negligible THD, S/N well over 100db, crosstalk well under -100db, and 24/192 bitrates. Sure, there’s differences in measurement, but the audible difference isn’t something I can hear.
Of course, that assumes level matching, because output voltage/impedance can vary wildly. Even a minor difference can make it sound more “full” or “bright”, when really, it’s just a bit louder.
What would you describe as bottom end?