Chris_launder, apocryphal or not, this is much like my experiences with the HFC gear. It is really something when one has a $1790 dac with $6900 ics and a $13,575 pc and loving it.
I am at my small home in the mountains of New Mexico with $2200 speakers, $1000 speaker stands, basically worthless H-Cat amp and preamp, two discontinued Stillpoints component stands with pipes to make a rack, 5 Exemplar Audio Portal pcs, and a 10 x 13 x 10 listening room along with 1 HFC URR pc, a pair of HFC UR speaker wires, and 2 pairs of HFC UR ics. My source is a new Empirical Audio Legacy music servers with about a T bite of cds, and DSD files from sacds all playing in double DSD. I would say this is a very mixed bag.
I am at my small home in the mountains of New Mexico with $2200 speakers, $1000 speaker stands, basically worthless H-Cat amp and preamp, two discontinued Stillpoints component stands with pipes to make a rack, 5 Exemplar Audio Portal pcs, and a 10 x 13 x 10 listening room along with 1 HFC URR pc, a pair of HFC UR speaker wires, and 2 pairs of HFC UR ics. My source is a new Empirical Audio Legacy music servers with about a T bite of cds, and DSD files from sacds all playing in double DSD. I would say this is a very mixed bag.