High resolution digital is dead. The best DAC's killed it.


Something that came as a surprise to me is how good DAC's have gotten over the past 5-10 years.

Before then, there was a consistent, marked improvement going from Redbook (44.1/16) to 96/24 or higher.

The modern DAC, the best of them, no longer do this. The Redbook playback is so good high resolution is almost not needed. Anyone else notice this?
erik_squires
You have not heard every DAC, so making sweeping statements is not useful.

Yes it is totally useful, and you can get off "your own product protection horse", as I did say every dac I've heard, and I hear pretty much a new dac every couple of weeks. 

Other vendors have brought their DAC's over (I wont mention) and they lasted 30 seconds in the system because they sounded so bad. Even the other vendors wanted me to remove them.
Wow! you must sell so many, sound like nothing but an ad to me. 
 
No matter how good the equipment, and/or bit resolution / sampling rate, it cannot fix a bad recording, and that's the bulk of them.

I love my digital front end, with r2r technology! I couldn't imagine my redbook CDs sounding any better than they do now.......

Mark Levinson No 31.5
Mark Levinson No 30.6
breezer -  Since 2006, I've been using an EAR Acute CD player.  It has large D getter, earliest version Amperex 6922 tubes, a seriously upgraded power cord and sits on Stillpoints Ultra-minis.  Now on their fourth version, my original Acute sells for 1/3 the price, between $1800 to $2000.  Absolutely worth it, unless you want to stream.  The subsequent versions include external DACs and higher resolutions like 192/24 instead of my 96/24.  The latest version is $6795
http://www.troelsgravesen.dk/EAR-Acute-Classic.htm I've heard it and it sounds very similar to my original with STOCK tubes.  Quite an accomplishment.
http://www.earyoshino.com/images/Reviews/HiFiChoice_Oct_2016.pdf   The Stereophile review was based on a defective unit that had a 6v hot output rather than a 2v which resulted in distortion.  It was sent back repaired and the reviewer grungingly claimed it was worth the money now.