I'm concerned with the relevance of some of the critical statements here and elsewhere. I do believe a SOTA DAC is worth owning, that's not the point. Even so, if someone had asked me a year ago, I'd have said that loudspeakers and room acoustics are ten times as important. That's being coy: they're contribution to the overall sonic result may well be a hundred times as important (or more). Can't be overestimated is more to the point.
Although I've heard many DACs, I have heard most in different systems, different rooms, some only at trade shows. How is one supposed to form an opinion?
Earlier this year, I got to hear a dCS Vivaldi stack in a room that had an all-glass front on one side, concrete on the other, and when the owner said something to the extent that he couldn't hear an appreciable difference between his Vivaldi stack and a Chord Dave, I was quick-minded enough to reply: "I believe you." What I really meant to say was, I would not have been able to tell a difference in an acoustically untreated listening room like that either.
I'm the kind of guy who, if you ever invite me over to your place, the moment you go to the kitchen to get a snack and a bottle of wine, if you're wondering if you heard someone clap real hard a couple of times, I swear it wasn't me. Just kidding. Of course it was me.
Back when I still built loudspeakers, we got to use the anechoic chamber of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. Working in there left a lasting impression on me. No one in their right mind would want listen to music, let alone live in a acoustically "dead" room. But it made me realize there's a whole spectrum between a room that doesn't acoustically interact with a speaker and ones that do, and now, whenever I go visit fellow audiophiles, I can't help noticing that nine out of ten (at the least) have systems in rooms with no acoustic treatment whatsoever.
The same audiophiles who'll share grossly generalized opinions such as "[insert brand name] sounds too [insert adjective] for my taste" etc.
When it comes to forming an opinion of my own, there aren't many DACs that I could compare in the same known system(s), much less in a blind or double-blind test, but one of them was the aforementioned Chord DAVE, in a listening room that's basically a library, with book shelves lining either side wall, i.e. not acoustically treated, but noticeably better than the average living room. There, the Chord DAVE, in a true blind test, didn't stand a chance against a two decades old dCS combo of Purcell Upsampler and Delius DAC.
By the way, my point is not that dCS is the best, let alone the only "best" there is. As mentioned earlier in this thread, I happen to find the sound of dCS hard to describe, and I'm here to explain why I know what I don't know.
Imagine for a moment a DAC existed that's truly transparent to the source (not saying dCS is quite there yet, although it appears to be the type of product they're trying to build, in contrast to a type of product whose purpose is to please, to me an equally legitimate if clearly different concept). If such perfection in a source component existed, it follows that any criticism would be due to the interaction of loudspeaker and listening room (or, indeed, something else).
There's no doubt to my mind that this is the reason why I've a) heard such a wide range of systems built around the same dCS DACs, and b) disliked the sound of most of those systems. When the same DAC sounds bright and analytical in one system, warm and opulent in another, dull and lifeless in a third, and natural and life-like in a fourth, and so forth, how would you describe such a DAC's "sound"?
What I do know is that if one decides to go down that path, i.e. of neutrality (again, I don't mean to say dCS is the only brand trying to achieve transparency to the source, I might as well type e.g. "MSB" in all the same places), be prepared to be disappointed. An no, I don't mean by the DAC.
I realize full well it's rarely unwillingness on the side of the respective owners of expensive systems to take room acoustics into consideration. Reasons are more often trivial, such as that one may not want to deny themselves e.g. the view, given they invested their hard earned money in real estate, then, for some of us, there's the unavoidable WAF which precludes many audiophiles from building their dream system, let alone using ugly room treatment (although, some brands nowadays build somewhat more esthetic room treatment, still, what works is bound to be bulky, according to the laws of physics…).
What concerns me is that systems set up in listening rooms that lack acoustic treatment (with the exception of purposely built listening rooms) effectively consist of components mixed and matched to compensate for the weakness(es) of the room (and/or speaker). It's the interaction between speaker and listening environment that makes or breaks what we perceive as the "sound" of a system. The quality of gear is only relevant when it's given room (pun intended) to perform.
In this context, the difference between SOTA DACs, even though we audiophiles are adamant that a source component is what the rest of the system cannot possibly improve upon, overall isn't nearly as relevant for the net result as critics and audiophiles are trying to make believe.
It might be tempting to claim that a bright DAC will sound bright regardless of the context, or a lifeless one lifeless etc. In my experience, while there are some aspects of acoustics where there is predictability, this isn't one of them. What's really happening, in my experience, is that the comparatively minor flaws of modern source components are blown out of proportion by loudspeakers and their non-linear interaction with the listening room - in non-linear and thus unpredictable ways.
Having said that, when a (per se likable) nerd like Ethan Winer claims that affordable electronics set up in an acoustically treated room (of course he's in the business of selling room treatment, so one may want to take everything someone of his ilk says with a grain of salt, although I'm confident he sincerely believes what he says) will outperform an expensive audiophile system, he's forgetting to point out the obvious: that truly great electronics and speakers would profit exponentially from being set up a dedicated room.
This is what I've found most perturbing over the years: a deplorable lack of proportion. Too many audiophiles will willingly spend five, six, even seven digits on gear, yet invest next to nothing (if anything at all) in room treatment. Needless to say, some have great rooms - if you're blessed with one, more power to you! If you're not, please do us and yourself a favor, and think twice before you jump to conclusions, much less propagate them.
"Don't believe everything you think."
As for me, while I'm relegated to my current "music chamber", I'm having an acoustic ceiling (not to mention new floor and - Yikes! - windows) built into what I'm hoping is going to be my future listening room. Have to put my money where my mouth is. Sadly, no purposely built golden cuboid or trapagon. No carbon diaphragmatic absorption in the walls. Not going to be a SOTA room by any means. But: no use setting up a system in a room where one can hear even the slightest flutter echo in response to the oldest and simplest of all acoustic "measurements" - the clap test. May want to find the mike and FFT analyzer, and think about further room treatment at some later point. First things first.
Long, rambling rant, I realize. Back to the loony bin…
Greetings from Switzerland, David.
