You are talking about small differences that can change your perception based on auto suggestion, so you need blind tests.
Stop it. I did not say that, and I am not talking about that. Do not put words into my mouth.
One of us does this for a living. It's me. So you can stop "talking down" and being disgustingly insulting to somebody who actually knows his chops here. Be quiet and listen.
Level match was set equal, this is what we normally do. I did even set delta-sigma player lever higher at times to see whether it helps, but it didn't.
And how did you know this was "equal". Please detail your measurements. Your measurements must be exact to at least a factor of 1.016, in other words, your overall gains through the system must be equal to within that factor. What instrumentation did you use? Any meaningful test MUST be state precisely how this was measured, and with what kind of signal, to what degree of error.
I explained it was a very good quality recording (Deutche Grammophone, Telarc or Sony, I don't have it anymore). Before the gong was engaged there was a culmination of choir performance, very intensive, then a second of silence. The amplitude of the gong was about -40dB, VU meter merely jumped. There is no case of clipping. A similar amplitude are reverbation of piano recording, you should know about.
At
www.aes.org/sections/pnw in the "meeting reports" area, you will find an "fft workshop". This explains how to load a freeware version of Octave, which is a Matlab clone, and provides an octave script that will analyze your track.
Please post the results of that script on your chosen clip, and then we can talk about it. Your "VU" reading is meaningless in the digital world, sorry, at least for what we're talking about now.
AND my DAC's don't do what you describe, NONE of them do that.
So, I've given you minimum tolerances, I've given you a way to analyze your signal, and I've corrected your complete misapprehension about what level of "obvious" is necessary to obviate a DBT. Basically "signal completely missing" is about how far you need to go to make a DBT not necessary.
So, do it over, and give your results some basic meaning.
Also, put in control signals, an A vs. A, and an A vs. impaired A that SHOULD be obvious. You can't test your test until you do that.
So, now you know more, and you have real, expert advice.