Mine was pretty much on song straight out of the box. Although as I said earlier I did let it run for a while(maybe and hour?) before listening seriously. Might have gotten a bit fuller in the mids after 20 hours or so, I don't recall for sure. I am still very pleased with it. Almost all my listening has been PCM, but I have run some DSD over PCM from a MacBook Pro running Audirvana and that sounds very good as well. I have the MacBook Pro hardwired to the Internet for TIDAL and even the 44.1 TIDA HiFi sounds good. Most TIDAL MQA is of course better.
Keep in mind it's not just the DAC chip/circuit, these days the analog section can be the deciding factor.
Good Luck with your comparison,
Robert
Keep in mind it's not just the DAC chip/circuit, these days the analog section can be the deciding factor.
Good Luck with your comparison,
Robert