opaqueice;581812 Wrote: > Hmm. Well, please don't take this the wrong way, but I'd love to > witness a blind level-matched test where you try to tell them apart. > Under normal listening conditions (normal volume, normal music) I might > even be willing to bet money that you can't get (say) 5/5 correct (which > ought to be trivial if it's really night and day). > > The only thing that makes me hesitate is that I've never heard (or > heard of) Caiman before, so possibly it's some odd design that strongly > distorts the sound.
Well, ALL audio components distort the sound. There is no way out of that predicament. The only question is what kind of distortion are we talking about. In general, digital source components generate sufficient quantity of non-harmonic distortions as they work on reproducing the signal chain, so much so that we tend to hear the sum of these distortions as certain brittleness, harshness. Thus there is a consensus that digital sound reproduction is inferior to analog sound reproduction. Make no mistake, analog sound sources also generate loads of distortion, actually much higher degree of distortion than digital sources. However, that's a different kind of distortion (my sound engineer friends refer to analog distortions as 'soft knee' distortions). These distortions are of harmonic nature, and even though the analog soft-knee distortions tend to be of a much higher magnitude than the digital random distortions, they are much more pleasing to the ear. Beresford Caiman DAC is designed in such a way to sound like a vinyl record. Gone are all the harsh artifacts that other, much more 'correct' and superior DACs invariably introduce into the audio chain. Anyone who is fortunate enough to hear Caiman DAC in action is guaranteed to get blown away by the analog-like warmth, softness and sweetness of the sound it produces. In comparative blindfold testing, it is always clear that other DACs tend to sound cold, clinical, lifeless, when compared to Caiman. If I place you in a DBT session with Caiman and some other flagship DACs and you can't hear the drastic difference between the two, then I'd be forced to conclude that you have no pulse whatsoever. The reason I'm so sure is that I've tried comparative listening tests with some other components (most notably pre amps and power amps), and for many instances, couldn't really detect much, or any difference. With Caiman, however, the difference is immediate. Try it, you'll be very, very surprised. -- magiccarpetride ------------------------------------------------------------------------ magiccarpetride's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=37863 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=82520 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
