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Apologies for the long post, but I got out my (worn) soapbox...
When Philips first released "Bitstream" and Sony released a PDM Bitstream-like D/A in one of their TOTL ES integrated amplifiers, I listened to their offerings against the current SOTA at the time which was the PCM-58P selection K, J and S which were in their flawlessly reviewed CDP-338esD and CDP-X7esd. Soon after the PCM-63 based Denons and others came along. The Denons were extremely good.
Very soon after, Matsushita released their MASH (PWM) and Sony had their own silicon (High Density Linear D/A), Pioneer called theirs the Direct Linear Conversion and Yamaha had S-Bit. We sold them all and played with them all, compared each model etc.
None of the 1st generation 'one bit' machines sounded anywhere near as clean as either TOTL TDA-1541 (S1) (Philips) based machines or the PCM-58/63 (Burr Brown) based Japanese machines (most with 8x O/S) chipsets by that stage.
What I heard (in very quiet and well designed demonstration rooms and at home with loan models), was a loss of detail in low level parts of classical music and a general 'fuzz' as reverb/echoes faded out.
By the time '1 bit' had come along, digital recording was about as good as it ever got for CD- the early issues with A/Ds had been solved and dynamics were still being preserved. Plenty of recording were SBM or better and we were getting fewer 'this CD was originally recorded on analog equipment' (i.e. lots of low level woodles* and hiss etc)
So, I made many speeches to my audiophile friends (back in the early 90s) that this new 'single bit' was flawed and sounded poor. It was only ever conceived to save money (which is perfectly true- read the Philips development details on the design), but had a few gains in a few parameters. Philips themselves stated the design was for portable, consumer and car audio and certainly not for the discerning (read wealthy audiophiles perhaps?) let alone state of the art products.
I bought and stockpiled a number of run-out TOTL multibit machines which I still have and use. My daily go-to CD player is a Sony CDP-X7esd (USD $2000 in 1989/90). The tested performance of that machine is still state of the art for 16/44. In a few parameters, I'm yet to see it bettered.**
The only 'single bit' D/A I listened without prejudice (sorry George Michael) to back in around 2000ish was was a gorgeous little Rotel RDP-980 which incidentally contained an Asahi Kasei D/A converter (a small and unknown company at the time actually). It was a joy to listen to and finally banished the prejudice I had to PWM. That said, I could hear the muting at LSB/0dB level, and that annoyed me. (fussy a##hole I am) I still use that D/A for TV and movie sound via SPDIF optical from the flat panel TV.
If we weren't so geographically separated, it'd be easy (and fun) to compare some of my classic TOTL CD players with modern offerings. On 16/44, I'd be happy to wager that most of the new D/As only perform better on 24/44 or above, and, even then, the incremental improvement is nowhere near the theoretical. Consider that in 1990, THD in commercial D/As (multibit) had hit the theoretical limit of what 16/44 was capable of- you can't say the same of anything made these days.
So, yes, 'the brain of the perceiver' can have an effect, but I'd like to think that back then, when the D/A world was young (and so was I), I gave any and all conversion methods a fair go. Multibit won out for me back then. I was ridiculed when I was snapping up BB based machines at cost less 40%, but I know for sure it was the right decision.
* woodles. Tape head LF modulation from analog recorders
** review data (AP system 1) from a few individual magazine reviews on file (I can dig them out)
Well in the days of the one bit PCM DACs that sometimes had a gray sound to them I thought, I managed with a Meridian 563. It was in time replaced by a Wadia 25 which used 4 PCM 1702s.