I stumbled on a channel named "Wheezy Reviews" and watched his review on the JDS Atom Amp/DAC stack, and his comments about how the stack sounds seem to align with how the majority of ASR members evaluate DACs and Amps. With all of the absurd hype and bs subjectivism on YouTube, this is a breath of fresh air:
“right so we've looked at the atom amp and the atom DAC and of course they they pair well together but how do they sound well i connected some headphones i cranked up the volume there's no audible distortion there's plenty of dynamics there's no loss of bass articulation there's no complaints at all look i'm not going to sit here and bullshit you as some reviewers would it's a DAC and an amp that sounds like a DAC and an amp and that is to say that it doesn't really sound like anything and let's be honest when you're looking at any device in this price range be it the Schiit modi and magni the jds stack or or any others they are mostly just a side grade from each other the differences between each other are absolutely minuscule now i could sit here and wax lyrically about the sound stage and liquidity of the sound and how this synergizes with this that or the other but i'm not gonna do that to you because that's all bullshit now amps certainly can color the sound but that's more of your tube amp and not really your solid state amp it's particularly a good measuring solid state amp like this frankly in my opinion if a solid-state amp or DAC has an audible character then i consider that to be broken uh if there are audible differences it would be next to impossible to discern without rigging up some kind of volume match switcher which i don't have admittedly i don't have maybe it's something i'll do in the future now sure there could well be some golden ears people out there that can hear all kinds of things the rest of us mere mortals cannot but frankly i wouldn't believe anything that anyone says unless they could pass a blind test and to be quite honest it's just not relevant to the vast majority of people and before i get off on this crazy crazy rant at this point let's let's just just dial it back okay so audio gear has come an extremely long way in the past few years the quality you can get for around about 100 now is is fantastic and the differences between that gear is negligible at best how you should decide where to put your money should really be on features…”
“right so we've looked at the atom amp and the atom DAC and of course they they pair well together but how do they sound well i connected some headphones i cranked up the volume there's no audible distortion there's plenty of dynamics there's no loss of bass articulation there's no complaints at all look i'm not going to sit here and bullshit you as some reviewers would it's a DAC and an amp that sounds like a DAC and an amp and that is to say that it doesn't really sound like anything and let's be honest when you're looking at any device in this price range be it the Schiit modi and magni the jds stack or or any others they are mostly just a side grade from each other the differences between each other are absolutely minuscule now i could sit here and wax lyrically about the sound stage and liquidity of the sound and how this synergizes with this that or the other but i'm not gonna do that to you because that's all bullshit now amps certainly can color the sound but that's more of your tube amp and not really your solid state amp it's particularly a good measuring solid state amp like this frankly in my opinion if a solid-state amp or DAC has an audible character then i consider that to be broken uh if there are audible differences it would be next to impossible to discern without rigging up some kind of volume match switcher which i don't have admittedly i don't have maybe it's something i'll do in the future now sure there could well be some golden ears people out there that can hear all kinds of things the rest of us mere mortals cannot but frankly i wouldn't believe anything that anyone says unless they could pass a blind test and to be quite honest it's just not relevant to the vast majority of people and before i get off on this crazy crazy rant at this point let's let's just just dial it back okay so audio gear has come an extremely long way in the past few years the quality you can get for around about 100 now is is fantastic and the differences between that gear is negligible at best how you should decide where to put your money should really be on features…”