JJZolx Wrote: > Is it your opinion that the $8 chip in a DAC accounts for so much of > its characteristic sound that you may as well junk every DAC made more > than a couple years ago? I've never seen an even remotely similar > opinion statement from an audiophile, so it raises an eyebrow...That's > the sort of thing you read from an engineer that dables in audio. If > the spec looks good on paper and on a scope, then it must sound better, > right?
Well, that's largely right, and especially in digital. If the specs are right -- low jitter, etc., etc. -- then it should work well. This is not like the world of tubes, where you have a bit of black art mixed with the science (for the record, I have no stomach for tube stereo amps, but I do have twenty or so tubed guitar amps and more tubes can I would care to count on any given day). And, yes, I think the figure of around 95% is about on target. It is in my experience, and I have one of those proverbial "revealing systems" and thirty-five years of music training to back up my opinion. The fact is, and I seem to keep repeating this, the law of diminishing returns is brutally applied in audio. Witness yesterday's Stereophile review: the SB, through a DAC, sounded so close to a $6k CD player, through the same DAC, that the differences were "irrelevant." It would be interesting, next, to see the SB with the $6k DAC against the SB with a more bleeding edge $1k DAC...and then, in a blind test, with no DAC at all. I've done this (well, not with a $6k DAC, but with a $4k dac, a $1k DAC, and no DAC) with friends and the conclusion was that the differences were minimal...and, with certain recordings or genres, irrelevant. The most expensive CD player I've owned is the Audio Aero Capitole. I'm just as happy with the Squeezebox and friends who've heard my system tend to be impressed and leave the door ordering Squeezeboxes, too. (Seriously. A pal of mine is selling off a $4k EC CDP and keeping a Squeezebox.) -- highdudgeon ------------------------------------------------------------------------ highdudgeon's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2195 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=22301 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
