addit : this was moved from the thread about denafrip ares ii, but that was actually the point of the post, not to fan a flame war about measurable vs. subjective splendour
still, now it's over here, and i guess i can either read 200 pages of conflicting opinions, or look somewhere else
perhaps this is not the forum i am seeking? anyway, back to the original post :
been reading a lot about this technology, and watching youtube reviews by people who generally seem impressed by it
yeah, i know that readings are some indication of technology's "measure", but ears are an individual's unique portal to the brain
so when the purists are outraged that people couldn't possibly "hear" the differences, i would like them to explain how they can be so assured that their experience is the real one?
i am a would-be audiophile, and i can quite clearly hear the differences between the components that led me to start my upgrade journey
the chaintech av710 sound card that sounded way better tricked to use the wolfson dacs from the rear channels to do the main stereo out (the bass was suddenly magically tighter and with more punch)
the asus xonar upgrade to opa627's - again, mostly the bass, but also the general width of the sound stage
then i tried the burson v5i in their place, and you know what - more expensive didn't make it sound better... synergy ? artefact ? maybe- but it diminished the experience
and the onboard dac in the nad d3020 was painful in comparison to either, with the upper registers being way too sharp and fatiguing
discovered the khadas tone board, and it shat on all the previous dac solutions, for crazy cheap - i don't know about hearing the "hump" in their implementation of the ess es9038q2m, but i do know about hearing detail and separation
in the interim, i have also played with a (wolfson based) alo pan am and an akm ak4993 based stoner acoustics ud130
what i realise is that despite the clarity of the ess chip, and the perhaps for my ears "too clinical" output of the akm, that the warmth of the wolfson implementations touch my heartstrings in a way the others don't, despite their very agreeable but less appealing analogue out
tldr - if a trained musician can tell me that the tonal qualities of the denafrips are the closest to "real life" that they have heard, why isn't that so?
all the engineering analysis in the world is rather pointless when the personal experience of professional musicians' appreciation compared to actual performance consistently report that is more "life-like" regardless of measuring minuscule increased distortion - the explanation that r2r doesn't influence higher order harmonics the same as delta sigma is surely of some consequence in analogue out
real life is imperfect; the nuanced harmonics of a real performance are on their own - any reproduction by its very nature is "lossy" surely, especially if you are filtering high order harmonics to "fix" distortion?
if what you listen to is mostly recordings, your appreciation will be disproportionately tuned to hearing what you are used to, whereas for a performer, the obvious deficiencies in reproductions will be quite audible, or more likely, missing something that is reality in live performance
i'm not a sound engineer, but my ears work okay, and i know what i like
i know that the focal elears and the alo pan am with the french tubes sound the best of all; i know that the russian tubes sound better with the akg q701's on the same amp, but those tubes are not as good as the elears
i understand tubes "colour" the output - but they and the wolfson are a marriage made in heaven for my happiness
i would be really keen for someone to do a double blind test on me with a denafrips, to see if it hits the spot
personally, if it sounds like angels singing, i don't give a rat's arse about the "lesser thd %" that is below my threshold to appreciate - i just want to hear beautiful music that melts my heart
so, feel free to flame me as if i have suggested silver cables make electrons spin better, but please explain why all the best electronic analysis in the world can possibly define what others' cochlears interpret as if that extinguishes the experience