Hi Keith,
I am responding to you because it's rather difficult to respond and talk sense to the senseless. It was actually a very good review and if the individual that keeps crying actually read it, he might understand what was said. First of all it's obvious the reviewer does not care for DSD. He is not the only one, many hear the exact same qualities that he describes and they prefer PCM. Furthermore the comments at the end was not about this DAC, but DSD as a whole so a tantrum was really unnecessary.
Also if someone bothered to read what was said in the review about basically keeping the startup volume down if you mess up a setting... Clearly could signify that that volume setting was not necessarily a listening setting but just became a screenshot for the review. To jump to conclusions and start stamping one's feet and basically saying the reviewer is clueless and needs a new computer is really unnecessary.
It's actually excellent review, of what seems to be a very good DAC, but God knows why Sonny would want to be involved with and allow someone to distribute his product over here that clearly still has a lot to learn.
Regards
Bob
Bob, why are you stalking Blizzard? You guys have had pissing matches on multiple forums and now it seems personal. Your comments are not particularly edifying at this time. Yes, Mike can be a little blunt and messianic in his convictions coupled with slightly autistic interpersonal skills and Red Bullish mania. That aside, he has done his due diligence with this stuff and deserves credit for that. I have found his suggestions helpful. I employed his streamer concept and he took a lot of his personal time (including hacking into my computer remotely) to tweak the setup. I find most audiophiles enjoy blowing smoke online with little in the way of due diligence (and the empirical evidence that comes from it) to back it up.
Bob, have you personally used HQPlayer? DSD? What setup are you currently using for digital files?
As for Srajan's review, I too was left with mixed feelings. I am a fan of his writing in general (many people are not), and he does have a lot of good insights into audio. On the other hand, amidst his swirling and lengthy preludes (and ironically rather short analysis), it is easy to come away disoriented like the tail end of some acid trip...lots of revelations but an inability to reconstruct anything meaningful. He grudgingly added the DSD addendum with HQPlayer and simply blurted out his historical bias against the format against the backdrop of bungled setting as Mike alluded to. You can radically alter the sound with different settings. That software is very powerful. I use it with Roon and dig it!
I "thought" that the raison d'être of the PD2 digital section was the filterless DSD mode? The fact that Sonny has a new custom board pending speaks volumes. Maybe he can tell us more about it?