The sound quality from DACs - is it all the same?

good discussion and good points made @ghdprentice

great companies in this field know exactly what they are doing, just as great car companies, great winemakers, great chefs are expertly competent and in control of their processes and end goals... over time these may change to meet their view of market and business requirements but their new products and how they perform don’t come about by their shooting in the dark

i repeat this every and now and then on this discussion board, great durable companies that have sustained success in this field - like conrad johnson, audio research, pass labs, magnepan, vandersteen, sonus faber, audio note, msb, sme and so on... they have not been stealing money from the deaf all these years...

@jjss49 

+1

I wish i had written this sentence myself...  😁😊

 They don’t play with blind tests any more than the top birders in the world need to refer to google to make sure of the correct identification of a sparrow.

@asctim 

Sounds great according to them.

+1

Unless they can statistically prove over a larger population that it sounds better, it don't mean jack. The ultimate approach in audio so far has been Floyd and Olive's at Harman, where they can predict with 0.86 correlation coefficient which speaker listeners will prefer in blind listening tests. And when bass extension is similar, that number goes up to 0.996. Believing anything someone or some company subjectively says without going through this kind of statistical scrutiny is akin to believing in get-rich-quick schemes. Unfortunately, the human psyche is built to want to believe in these kinds of schemes.

Unless they can statistically prove over a larger population that it sounds better, it don’t mean jack

I highly doubt people buy their audio gear to statistically prove (satisfy) the mass population. I have a strong feeling they buy them to satisfy themselves. Not other people. There may be exception.

Believing anything someone or some company subjectively says without going through this kind of statistical scrutiny is akin to believing in get-rich-quick schemes

Again, I don’t think people blindly listen to what a company subjectively says. There may be exceptions. I have a strong feeling people buy their audio gear based on what they like and enjoy. Personal preferences. Commensurate with their budget / money outlay they can afford. Who cares about "Statistical scrutiny", and not sure whether the masses or a large group of "sample population" needs to have any impact on individual people’s decision to buy their personal audio gear.