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I agree that with today's best DACs, the sound quality of many Red Book CDs is scary-good

And I mean that includes many early digital SACDs from labels like Phillips... . Not just the audiophile-approved ones.

Brian Zolner of Bricasti has said to me (but I am sure that wrenching one sentence out of context is risky if not outright unfair) that if you play it back right, 44.1 kHz is sufficient for most cases.

That said, I am very sure that I can easily hear the difference between 16 bits and 20 and up, and I have long held that the watershed in digital audio is going from 16 bits to 20.

Note, I am NOT saying that 96 or 192 is worthless or illusory. All I am saying is that with Red Book playback through one of today's best DACs, you can get completely involved in the music.

Look at it this way--people go hunting for Mercury Living Presence LPs, and are swept away by the results, and I do not question that. However, were one to add up all the non-linearities in those signal chains, or the early RCA stereo signal chains, you could convince yourself that the result should sound horrible.

I have no opinion on the Devialet, not having heard it.

jm

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