Little Giant NOS DAC mini review

Digital is plagued with audible distortion!

DAC's that can keep it in the neglegible range are special indeed, especially when they employ no filters.

Did you really hoped to achieve digital nirvana from a Chinese clone and PC?

Well, I knew that computers had noise issues, but didn't realize how bad the issue could be. And why would this dac be the sole exception using the same coaxial source?

To add to my observations regarding this dac, I find it to be an accurate one which appears to neither add nor subtract anything from the signal it recieves.

I normally don’t champion accuracy in audio components as I prefer those that smooth and sweeten the rough parts of most recordings. But this dac appears to be refined enough to keep things civil and listenable.

I forgot to mention that I don’t really stream, and that I have a good soundcard.

Vinyl and cd’s are my main source of listening.

In absolute terms, digital is not, and cannot be truly accurate to the original performance in its present form.

But, an astute listener can thru years of listening experience gain the knowlege and ability to fairly accurately judge whether or not a particular component is lossy, colored or inaccurate to the format source in general.

I find it accurate to what my redbook cd’s are capable of, nothing more, and nothing less if I am not splitting hairs over it.

I will put on a direct to disc record if I am in the mood to obsess over how accurate something sounds to the real thing.

I have indeed done such tests to determine which formats are truest to the source. While we didn't have high order dsd back then, but we did have access to the best recording technologies and equipment.

The tests involved musicians playing live acoustic instruments, recorded in both analog and digital (to dat), and played backed thru what we felt was the most transparent system we could assemble (including headphones which I still use to this day).

In one session, we were blessed to have access to a direct to disc setup (cost us a small fortune), which clearly rivalled the best analog tape recordings, while being nearly indestinguishable from the original performance.

But the digital captures were clearly the least accurate of the recordings, sounding noticably and distinctly different from the live performances, which were all compared directly in real time.

To this date, I have not seen or heard of a single digital technology that can capture a live acoustical event accurately. High order DSD is the closest, but it lacks the critical inner detail to successfully pull it off.