the thread is obviously to discuss sound quality differences between top-performing portable dac/amps, best sounding products and if Desktop dacs can offer something more.
Threads can be about many topics and will always include many - often opposing - views on that topic. You picked one such view and assume that it must be correct because some people in that thread had the same idea. That's not a logical proof of anything, though.
is this whole forum really dead-set that DACs is just scientific measurements and better measurements = better DAC ?
No. There's more to it. Nonetheless, there is a level of "good enough" measurement-wise past which there's nothing to gain with regards to the audible performance. Just admiration for better engineering.
so everyone over on head-fi is just delulu?
Well, that's just a given regardless of any discussion around here
almost everyone agrees that expensive Cables are snake oil (yet so many still sold and so many "enthusiasts" so often write in forums about their $3000 cable upgrades) ...
.... but DACs are just measurements ???
There's more than enough self-proclaimed audiophiles out there claiming to hear "night and day differences" between f*cking power cables. Clear, that is just lunacy and you seem to agree with that assessment. The same would be true about interconnects, yet there are even more people claiming to hear non-existant differences between those. But why do you expect the same people making the same claims about DACs to be correct? Where do you draw the line? Why would you draw it at that specific component? Seems arbitrary.
In short: It is trivial to
measure something with far higher precision that what humans will ever be able to hear. This has been proven for all relevant aspects of hearing. So if we now measure those devices and see, in the hard, verifiable data, that two devices perform better than the threshold of audibility in all measured dimensions, why would anyone conclude that they would (or even could) still sound different? Where would that difference come from, if the signal leaving the devices is identical?
The simple answer is sighted testing. Not
level-matched, with
long switching times between devices,
biased.
Flawed testing. That's it. People think they hear lots of things and then fail to prove that once the necessary controls are in place. I'll link some relevant threads once again:
Just uploaded a video on the basics of performing controlled tests in audio. It was motivated by saving myself text in having to write all of this down when telling someone who to do these tests right. And as a counter to a few online personalities to keep saying they do "blind" tests yet when...
www.audiosciencereview.com
This is abbreviated synopsis of the paper, Ten Years of ABX Testing, by David Clark: http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=5549 ABX testing as you may know is a double blind testing methodology aimed at determining if someone can reliably identify A from B. Both A and B are presented to the...
www.audiosciencereview.com
