Absolute top tier DAC for standard res Redbook CD

mattnshilp OP
I have to admit this Mystique V3 is growing on me. It’s stupid good for the money! It has a sense of natural presentation, texture and harmonics while still attaining accuracy and clarity that is hard to achieve. It’s intimate when it needs to be, and big and voluptuous when asked to be. I’d put it comfortably in the “if it were twice as expensive I wouldn’t think twice” category.

Anyone looking in this price range would be doing themselvesto not consider the Mystique. It’s REALLY

Who would have thought, "Absolute top tier DAC for standard res Redbook CD",   with R2R Ladder Multibit dac

I came to the conclusion that a 20-bit R-2R ladder DAC has the purest form of PCM decoding.

Combine that with the fact that over 80% of all the recorded music commercially available is only available in 16-bit 44.1KHz PCM, and you now know why I chose to engineer my Mystique DACs the way I do ;-)

 
Tried to explain this year or so ago Benjamin for PCM redbook replay, but they were so caught up in the Delta Sigma dsd storm, they couldn't see the forest through the trees.

Cheers George

Victims of marketing.

A few years ago at RMAF we held a contest (with some pretty cool prizes) to determine if people could guess the resolution of of five songs.

We had a 25 song playlist printed on a single page with columns for song names and check boxes to the right for "16/44.1" and "24/96" and "24/192." We literally passed out a dozen clip boards and had a pile of sharpened pencils at the info table when you enter.

Each Attendee had to stay for five songs and mark a check next to what resolution they thought each song was. We had a few hundred Attendees enter the contest.

How many songs out of five do you think the average person got right?

NONE.

We had about a dozen prizes and had trouble finding enough people that got ONE out of five guesses correct. We had to give one of the prizes to a person that crossed out and wrote over but their crossed out guess was right (seriously).

Not one person could even get two right.

BTW, more than half of the songs we used were nothing more than well recorded 16-bit 44.1KHz Reed Book CD rips.

What does that tell you?

What does that tell you?

That my Amy > Bob > Amy > Bob test is best.

I believe the quality of a recording is something like over 80% the quality of the original master and less than 20% the specific digital format and resolution it is released in.