if you go out of your way to criticize a product based on something not head to head; that is the dictionary definition of picking a fight. just say'n.
then you doubled down with your "to my mind there's absolutely no reason a DAC should sound less dynamic". which you had know would lite a fire.
of course, you did finally disclose you are a long time dCS owner, owning a dCS Vivaldi stack. ah hah. and that is a great dac. and i'm happy for you. you could have said up front that you prefer the dCS and here is why.
You'll notice I didn't mention what brand I use nor made comparisons because I do no share this attitude, that one has to pick a winner as if audio gear were something other than what it is to me: a means to an end. If I meant to state preferences for a brand, I would have before being asked what I own and use.
To me gear is good if it makes me want to listen to music until I keel over, normally into the wee hours, usually four to six hours four or five times a week, sometimes more, sometimes longer. And I'm referring to attentive listening, not doing anything else (such as right now, I stopped playback to type this as I have no patience for background music). Of course that's the point I've been making all along: that I want playback to sound captivating.
The primary reason I said there's no reason a DAC should sound less dynamic (than anything whatsoever, not vinyl in particular) is because I'm frankly miffed at the quantity of dynamically compressed music today, worst of all remasterings of recordings from the analogue era that I grew up with and love, when finally, we have the technology available to transfer the full dynamic range available on the original master and session tapes. From that perspective, nothing ever makes sense to me that sounds dynamically flat. Why would anyone want that? But maybe I just don't get it and it
is what people want, same as in classical music interpretation nowadays, unoffensive with majority appeal.
Regarding Wadax, I sure wish some of the my audiophile buddies who shared these experiences with me would chime in, because it's not as if any one of them put it as politely as I tend to.
Note the people I talk about all own and/or "prefer" different brands, on the contrary, there's rarely any agreement as to what we
all find "best", and the point can never be to justify one's purchases since paying heed to other people's opinions isn't going to make one spend more time listening to music. No one can spend more than every free minute doing what one loves doing.
As to your concerns, I sure hope we're wrong and that what we heard wasn't representative (and I remember saying to my audiophile buddies, more than once in fact, that I look forward to another opportunity, as I always do, because I'm always curious). I can't say I'm too concerned given my experience that most of the dCS playback I've heard over the years (an awful lot!) wasn't representative either. The common theme there was an often analytical and "objective" kind of sound (Yawn!), except I've been lucky enough to hear that brand sound great in a handful systems, so I know it
can sound great, and that the problem apparently wasn't with the source component (more often than not, especially at trade shows or dealer demos, brands like dCS are paired with other popular brands, not necessarily personal favorites).
Point being, we're never listening to anything in isolation, and there are more reasons, unfortunately, for something to go wrong in a demo than for everything to go right (throwing a handful popular brands into a system isn't a recipe for synergy). Having said that, half a dozen times, same common denominator, can't be blamed for being disappointed at least for the time being…
Greetings from Switzerland, David.
