I think both of you make excellent points. Leaving aside the subjective side, I'm curious about the measurements. If you take a look at a reference input vs. the output measured on the same scope, how similar is a scope load vs your own system preamp input's? I suppose they are both high inpedance but I wonder how the load affects the dac output. You can find some excellent DAC measurements both in jitter and noise floor as seen on the spectrum analyzer. I wonder how this translates to the actual sound. I assume good measurements are at least an objective way of seeing how good a job the DAC is doing.
Importancy of DAC's analog section
Hi folks, many times I see in advertisements how proud the manufacturers are of their DAC's specific D/A conversion architectures, using the most advanced technologies, algorithms and chips (like the Miracle DAC chips). I think one thing is often overlooked and that is a DAC's analog section. How important is in your opinion a DAC's analog section? Could one make a musical sounding DAC consisting of a not very refined/advanced D/A conversion system but a SOTA analog section? Or just the other way around?
Chris
Chris