On Tue, 2005-10-04 at 18:30 -0700, GreenMan wrote: > I took home a Sonic Frontiers SFD-1 MKII over the weekend and I swear I > couldn't hear any difference between it and the SB2's native dac. This > disappoints me. Either my ears aren't golden enough, there's a severe > weakness in my system, or a 1997 $2500 tube dac sounds the same as a > 2005 solid state one. Aaaargh!
Other than the tubes, isn't that to be expected? All the DACs are just integrated circuits, so they are at least subject to Moore's law. The DAC in an SB2 is current and a solid design. You are talking about 8 years, which is at least 4 generations of chips, and perhaps as many as 5 & 1/3 (if you use the 18 month cycle for Moore's law). Four generations is 16 times faster or cheaper. 5 1/3 is 40 times. When you have 40 times, you can have 8 times cooler and 5 times cheaper. What about just adding a tube preamp stage out of the SB2? -- Pat http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimserver/slimsoftware.html _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
