harmonic;235572 Wrote: > Besides the sb3 vs the transporter what have you else tried ?
Numerous other digital sources, from cheap CD players to an MBL that retailed somewhere around $10k, several SACD players, a universal DVD player, a Benchmark DAC1, an NOS Lite DAC AH, a Bel Canto DAC, and many more at various shows and people's homes. Obviously I A/Bed each of them against all the others. But here are some data points: in non-level matched tests, the results of listening tests are very strongly influenced by volume. in sighted tests, the results are strongly influenced by bias (this has been established many times, for example by asking people to compare two identical sources when they think one is more expensive and/or different in some way). in my case, no obvious differences between any of the digital sources I've auditioned, with a few exceptions (see below). no audible difference between a SB3 and a TP in an extremely high-end system. in ~500 blind tests of audiophiles conducted over a year, no audible difference between any of three different SACD players and the SACD output looped through a 44.1/16 ADA in several different systems. in numerous blind tests you can find on the internet, no difference between very expensive transports and very cheap ones. I COULD tell the difference between the Lite DAC and anything else into a particular passive volume control, because an impedance mismatch caused significant distortion at low volumes. One or two people on this forum have successfully identified higher-end digital sources in blind tests, although with low statistics and without careful controls. Draw your own conclusions, but don't go around telling people they're going to benefit from a major jump in sound quality if they buy an expensive digital source. It's a lie. -- opaqueice ------------------------------------------------------------------------ opaqueice's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4234 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=39093 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
