Does good technology guarantees musicality?

Shadorne, I agree. But do you only want to have accuracy without distortion? Even techno music from Kraftwerk (which seems devoid from any human emotion has some musicality).

Chris

Newbee, that's an interesting point. Some manufacturers are trying to get the best out of their D/A converters by optimizing the digital circuitry, but they pay less attention to the... D/A converter's analog part. I think it has to do with costs. A good discrete analog section add a significant amount to the total costs of a unit. So these manufacturers use OPamps because they are cheaper. But I think these OPamps are still inferior to well executed discrete analog amplifiers. Why are many so called reference "oldskool" DAC's (Wadia 9, Goldmund 10C, Accuphase DC-91, Krell Ref 64) still sound so good after nearly 20 years? Well I think mainly because of the high quality design of their (discrete) analog sections.

Chris

Very interesting conclusion Tvad. I'm also a proponent of a state-of-the-art analog section. The analog section could be the most determining factor as far as sound quality concerned. One can have a 1995 digital technology with very good analog section --> will give very good sound (Wadia, Goldmund, Accuphase), otherwise one can have 2008 digital technology with compromised analog section --> will give compromised sound. Do you agree with this?

Chris

Steve, are you a proponent of OPamps in the analog section of a DAC?

Chris

I would go further by saying that digital sound reproduction has not been evolving since 1992. In that particular year four companies introduced their reference digital units: Wadia with the 7/9, Krell with the MD-10 transport and Reference 64 DAC, Goldmund with the Mimesis 10P and Accuphase with the DP-90/DC-91. After these efforts: no news actually. What was their secret? Meticulous enginering and implementation of technology and superior design of the analog section. You might not agree with this statement, but you have to concur that those were the days.

Chris

Shadorne: you are right, but even without the current knowledge about jitter those manufacturers managed to produce very musical sounding machines, that are still very good compared to today's best efforts. You should admit that :)

Chris