Any source on that with a proper level matched blind test ? Sighted anedtodes contains no information due the level of bias and suggestion etc are much higher than the phenomen you try test .
Modern well designed DAC's are several magnitudes better than the human hearing and especially in our normal acoustic environment . That said I to would prefer a more flexible and better performing DAC , but I'm not imaging night and day differences Caveats: equipment matching wrong gain staging ,system with to much gain amplify noise floor demanding to use a much quieter DAC , Touch is practically a 17,5 bit DAC or so not the most noise free one. Passive preamps I tried that once with a touch , in that use case I think a better built analog out would be better .( but I did that when I was full the audiophile kool-aid , when I was younger ) High end , yes they do sound "different" but not always for a good reason , weird filters or no filters for example . Much cargo cult design here . Some of the most expensive kit for thousands of dollars perform much worse than a random Chinese DVD player you can run and buy at the supermarket or your phone . My iPhone 6 run in circles around the old Meridian 518 DAC I owned in the 90's. There is no mystery here for decades this is a known fact about small signal electronics ( yes lump them all together ). If you have the following , flat frequency response ,low distortions and low noise . Humans can not hear any audible differences . Product may still be better and worse .There are much more to products than the sound alone this does not make them all the same . And it's matter of proportions using a passive xover in a speakers for example produces magnitudes more distortions than any DAC of any kind . So most high end and hifi brands are about boutique stuff in shiny boxes . DAC's and amps are mostly fit and forget components that should reside inside the speakers. It's an engineering exercise for the speaker builder , but not really a thing to muse about with wine taster language in hifi magazines . And intermediate solution is the new and interesting stuff NAD builds for example , very good "digital amplifiers" ( a horrible misnomer , but is much more evolved than good old class D ) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Main hifi: Touch + CIA PS +MeridianG68J MeridianHD621 MeridianG98DH 2 x MeridianDSP5200 MeridianDSP5200HC 2 xMeridianDSP3100 +Rel Stadium 3 sub. Bedroom/Office: Boom Kitchen: Touch + powered Fostex PM0.4 Misc use: Radio (with battery) iPad1 with iPengHD & SqueezePad (spares Touch, SB3, reciever ,controller ) server HP proliant micro server N36L with ClearOS Linux http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mnyb's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4143 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=105536 _______________________________________________ Touch mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
