I am bewildered.
Whilst evidence has it that a human can hear sounds with a difference of just over 120dB surely nobody is believing that in a 120 dB environment somebody would also be able to hear a sound at 0dB, that is more than ridiculous IME.
We listen on speakers which at best have distortion at -60dB.
No idea about headphones' distortion levels but it is unlikely to be another -60dB better
Whilst it is nice to see one bit of engineering being state of the art the idea that anybody could hear the differences like these whilst listening to music with even the dynamic range of classical recordings is inconceivable, never mind lots of modern pop music with even the lowest level sounds at -10dB.
Better SQ will come from better speakers and, perhaps, power amps with a better match to them not DACs.
I would bet a fiver nobody could hear the difference between any of the DACs in the top 3 tiers of Amir's tests by listening to music and probably even not most of the 4th.
To put this into perspective a first generation tape on my ¼ track Revox B77 at 7.5 ips has a SNR of 63dB (ASA-A) and a peak distortion of over 1.5% if I use +6dB VU peak to make hiss less audible between tracks, and everybody who listens is impressed by the realistic recording but hears he hiss between performances if listening in a quiet room.
