drmatt wrote: > I had a Chord Hugo (1) on loan for a while and IMO it sounded noticeably > sparklier than my then Naim Supernait built-in DAC, which also sounded > slightly murkier and weightier than the Mytek DAC I wound up actually > buying afterwards and which I still have (a very small difference that > one, and one that may not survive longer comparison, presumably because > they both were based off the same ESS DAC chipset). > > I think the Hugo measures a lot better stereo separation than the > Supernait dac at high frequency for a start, so that's not just my brain > tricking me into hearing things. So there you go ; DACs do seem to sound > different. > > And more to the point, the SBT is more than up to delivering very very > high end sound!I had a Musical Fidelity V-Dac for many years until I changed > to a Topping E30 late last year. There is nothing in the test results from Audio Science Review that would suggest they should sound different as although the V-Dac has poorer results than the E30 the differences should be inaudible. Yet I am pretty sure they do sound different. If I turn the amp to maximum volume with nothing playing there is noticeably less noise from the E30 but at normal levels it wouldn't be noticeable. This impression is not based on blind volume matched tests just general observations from playing familiar tracks. I did also change from a Touch connected via Coax to a piCorePlayer connected via USB but I also tried the Touch into the E30 using both USB and Coax and couldn't tell the difference. My main reason to try the E30 was to try asynchronous USB connection and the change from Touch to Pi was purely because I had an issue where the DAC would fall silent if the sampling rate changed and only recovered if I toggled inputs. That was obviously going to be a PITA so the Pi took over with the added bonus of being able to play DSD files natively.
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