Digital Drive

Posted by RGA (R) on January 08, 2022 at 21:23:44

In Reply to: RE: AN DAC4.1x kit ... really? posted by Ozzy on January 06, 2022 at 17:01:04

Measurements can tell you some things about the way something might sound but it's also somewhat in isolation. How the component measures and how it will work with the preamp or integrated and the speakers.

No one holds a gun to people's heads and say - buy this Audio Note DAC for $1,800 or that one for $100,000+

I have been an Audio Note fan for a Long time - since back in 2000 or so. One of the reasons I wanted people to give them a serious effort to try them was I found it so strange that gear that measured so badly (and compounding badly) could sound more open, more neutral, clearer, faster, more transparent than SS gear that measured so much better.

It's not just that the CD players didn't try to reduce jitter, or distortion or error correct etc was that they then sent that into a SET amp which distorts with volume and into rather middling speakers.

So when I went and auditioned a system with the Paradigm 100V2 a highly regarded speaker at the time or PSB Stratus Gold i, or Energy Veritas 1.8s or Apogee Duetta Sig II, or PMC BB5s or recently ATC SCM 150s and various flagship SS amplifiers from Bricasti, Edge, Constellation, Parasound, Soulution, Krell, Levinson, etc

It's one of those things where my brain is telling me - this stuff is objectively better - you can't hide from what the graph is telling you.

But there is also what the ear is telling you. And because the ear/brain can be fooled, I had to keep trying and trying and playing and playing because eventually, the brain is going to tell my ear that it is hearing a magic show of trickery.

Art Dudley may have claimed that the CD 4.1x was the best CD player he ever heard - Oxford University-trained engineer, Martic Colloms, who formed the company Monitor Audio and was the technical guru and measurements guy before JA, claimed an Audio Note DAC to be the best sounding digital player ever made (including hi-res DACs). And he did blind level matched sessions as well.

Of course, one of the biggest names in SACD mastering (and Classical mastering as well - Steve Hoffman), all those reviewers across a wide array of magazines, composers, Award-winning recording engineers are all wrong.

Instead, we must all trust a now hearing impaired old codger who can't hear above 10khz, who has never heard a single one of their product must be taken as gospel and everyone else who bought one is either an idiot or a shill.

As B.A. Baracus would say "I pity the fool!"