Little Giant NOS DAC mini review

OP,

Just as an encouraging comment about sound quality. As one rises up the ladder in digital, or analog for that mater, audio reproduction the sound quality improves enormously. To the point it was inconceivable only ten and twenty years ago. For instance, I have a high end turntable and phonostage that produces sound unattainable a few decades ago, and more impressively, my streamer and CD player produce sound quality at that same level. So, the defects go away with increasing better equipment. You can see my systems under my UserID.
 

None of this may not be worth it to you, but the problems with sound reproduction you have experienced can definitely be ameliorated.

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

Sorry, but unless you were the recording engineer who was there for the recording process there’s just no way you could ever know this.  What you are talking about is your own “perception” of what “you think” the original performance sounded like.  And, using a computer as a source whether through streaming or playing your own downloaded music is severely compromised and in no way should be used as a yardstick to judge digital sound.  If you listen to @ghdprentice above you should know his streaming setup now surpasses his $45k analog setup, so maybe — just maybe — you have some things to learn here.  Just sayin’.

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.

It can certainly be interesting and fun to get an upgrade in systems sound with ‘affordable’ gear. What’s even more interesting is how we get used to that sound over time and then can upgrade to a ‘better’ sound over and over and over. I once felt I had an awesome system that seemed like it had a great hard to achieve balance of a couple key traits. I am a couple/few price points above that now and could not go back… But it is always fun to find that pleasing facsimile-of-reality that sings with the given gear. There’s always more… 

The state of the digital art and design has changed almost exponentially for the better over the last decade or more.  Several years ago with my ~$25K analog set-up, I really enjoyed analog over my digital sound which also wasn't cheap.  However that all changed with a relatively inexpensive DAC that uses an older non over-sampling no digital filter chip and a really good power-supply.  It took my digital listening to a whole new level.  I found myself listening more to digital and less to my analog set-up.  As time passed, I sold my whole analog set-up and went fully digital and every step up the digital path since has shown me improvement with each change.  The key in my opinion for improved digital sound quality is to minimize noise and jitter in the digital path, and there are a number of rather inexpensive components that can get you there.