Late to the party but came across these exchanges quite by accident. Since the dawn of audiophilia there have always been tension between the naysayers (the “bits are bits and no cable can render measurable performance difference” crowd) vs the converts (sound improvement is out there, subjective and always possible). Count me in the latter camp.
Previous system included a Sonos that fed a Benchmark DAC2-L connected to a Jeff Rowland Continuum S2. Introduced the SM between Sonos and DAC and noticed clear improvement overall. When the time came to upgrade the DAC earlier this year I opted for a Bryston BDA-3. Once again, the SM made an audible difference with the Sonos sound vs Sonos directly connected to DAC. No other change whatsoever to system. And, by the way, my cables and connectors and PS Audio Power Plant P-10 are hardly sub-par.
So, for those of you inclined to disparage or dismiss Empirical Audio’s SM as unnecessary, ineffective, worthless gear unless you have been convinced with substantive data, graphical comparisons, blind tests, and nerd analytics, blah, blah, blah, fine! The specs, no matter how detailed, omit a fundamental sense in this hobby—your ears and how your auditory senses heighten the overall experience with familiar music. So you can keep your blind tests, grouse all you want about Steve‘s unwillingness to satiate your desire for confirming data, yada, yada, yada. The rest of us who are fortunate enough to afford spending reasonable sums to enhance our music listening experience based on real field tests that count will continue trusting our ears and our subjective experiences...and not regret money spent doing so for one minute.
And, those who resort to psycho babble to suggest we are merely justifying purchase should keep in mind that a great many of us have no problem whatsoever returning equipment that fails to perform as advertised or fails to improve/enhance our music listening experience. We don’t buy cars on specs alone; or purchase houses sight unseen based on inspector’s report only; or marry women only on the basis of measurable cup size; or purchase audiophile gear on comparative data analysis only. Except maybe for those favoring magazine brides, the subjective experience in each of those instances is a way more reliable predictor of long term enjoyment. Happy listening.