I am tempted by the A70 Pro as well, but it’s only needed if you see yourself getting an incredibly hard to drive headphone in the future. Namely, the Susvara, HE6se v2, the Mod House Tungsten, or the Abyss AB1266 Phi TC. Personally I want the Tungsten out of that bunch and that has a sensitivity in the 70s. I have it all picked out already even though it’s not bloody likely to ever happen for me.
I love my DSD, most of the best sounding recordings in my collection are in the format. I do agree that it’s somewhat rare to hear the best that DSD can offer. You need to have an AKM chip that has DSD Direct mode to bypass the modulation and processing. I just got a cheap DAC with this feature (SMSL D-6) and it’s been wonderful. Doing a casual A/B between modes, I could hear a slight difference, preferring DSD Direct mode even though it’s softer. It’s smoother, but has more detail and refinement. Better and more carefully crafted master as well, so put it all together and it’s digital nirvana.
You just have to reach a level of competency and avoid the utter crap. I was driving my Audeze LCD-2 with a JDS Atom and it was fine, until I started to use EQ. Then it was missing just a little bit of headroom, so I got the THX789. That was fine except for a couple quiet tracks that I had to max out volume. Then I switched to a balanced DAC, the SMSL DO100 and now everything is just peachy keen. I’m getting reference level performance and the DAC/AMP stack did not cost a lot. Only the cans were a fairly large expense, but that’s how it should be.
The Mod House Tungsten comes stock with Viking Weave cables, pretty snazzy.