rjplummer

"On a site dedicated to audiophiles, using the 'general population' as a point of reference does absolutely nothing to justify one's opinion as to whether difference can be heard between components."<br /> <br /> I'm responding to the comment that for 1/4 the price you can get 3/4 the performance. I claim that you can get 99% of the performance for 1/4 the price. I have no idea how the poster intended to quantify 3/4, so I gave one possibility for my 99% claim: 99 out of 100 people can't hear the difference. <br /> <br /> "In that you can only speak with any knowledge about your own personal music collection, who are we to argue that most of YOUR OWN music collection "isn't recorded carefully enough", etc.?"<br /> <br /> I'm assuming audiophiles, have at least a moderately large music collection. I further assume (although with less certainty) that they base most of their music purchases on the quality of performance. I probably shouldn't have said "recorded carefully enough," since often degradation occurs in the digital remastering. And since an audiophile system shouldn't be adding anything to the recording, most recordings just don't have the information present that one audiophile component can achieve perceptible benefit over another.<br /> <br />

I'd argue if your system is "helping" the music, it's not accurately reproducing it.<br />

I'm not saying that people need better ears anatomically to hear differences. Nor am I talking about only the audiophile population.<br /> <br /> My point is that 99% of the general population aren't used to listening critically enough to hear differences among high end components.<br /> <br /> I also note that nobody's objecting to my statement that most of one's music collection isn't recorded carefully enough to benefit from the difference among audiophile-quality DACs

I would guess fewer than one person in one hundred could hear the difference between this DAC and a great one in the $1500 range. And those people who could, would only hear the difference on a fraction of their library (certainly of their pop music library). It's probably the same between a $1500 and a $400 DAC.<br /> <br /> When you buy audiophile equipment, you're striving to hear music as close to what the performer created as possible. And based upon your budget, you calculate your own point of diminishing returns

In the past, you've defended the cost of audiophile equipment by computing the cost per year, saying that one can use great equipment for literally decades.<br /> <br /> I don't think that's true in this case. I think it will be fewer than five years before you'll be able to get dramatic improvements for less money. For instance, vinyl can still provide a better experience than 192/24. So it's reasonable to expect we'll increase sampling rate and depth over time.<br /> <br /> So this may be a great DAC, but it's only for those who don't mind spending a lot and replacing as frequently as they replace cars.<br /> <br />