My main setup is Meze Elites with a McIntosh MHA200 amp or Topping A90D, and my turntable is a relatively new Rega P10 /w Apheta 3. My speakers are Elac Vela FS 407.

I’ve tested on various headphones and turntables / CD players / streaming devices, it’s not device specific. For headphones I’ve tried Meze Elites and Empyreans, Focal Clears, Audeze LCD3, Grado SR225, Beyerdynamic DT990, Sennheiser IE900, AirPods and AirPods Pro. For turntables I’ve tried the Rega P10, Marantz TT15, U-Turn Orbit, and Technics SL-1200G, all with maybe a dozen different cartridges between them. I clean my records with an electrostatic cleaner, but also sometimes test other cleaning methods or just playing the record new, so I know it’s not a cleaning method that’s accidentally destroying the records.

Vinyl, CD, Streaming, playing through my setup or on my iPhone or on other people’s setups, it doesn’t matter, it’s always the same issues. So I know it’s not the setup.

How do you see this?

Looking at all the previous comments, I’d imagine it must be super confusing to get an answer, because there’s vastly different opinions across the board.

Personally, I’m happy with my Meze Elites, and don’t feel the need to get anything else. After a few weeks, my ears just adjust to whatever I’m listening to anyways and that becomes my new “normal”. So it really doesn’t matter what you use, it’s all about the music!

Everything you put into the chain will affect the sound in some way. With DACs the differences are extremely small usually. Even using different technologies like DS and R2R, the difference is very small.

With amps in my experience, the differences can vary from imperceptible to small. If you’re talking about solid state vs. tube, you’re much more likely to hear a difference. Comparing two solid state and high quality amps, you may not even notice a difference, but sometimes it’s pretty obvious especially if it’s an integrated amp that is adding some EQ into the chain. Or if comparing an A vs. AB vs. D amp.

Anyone saying “there’s no difference” is probably talking about comparing two amps/DACs using the same technologies. But there’s more of variance when you start talking about different tech. It’s still subtle though IMO, it’s mostly for people who are trying to eek out those last few percentage points if you have sensitive/ trained ears.