@sunjam For fun, wanna train your ears to tell the difference between Sinc-L with 7th order noise shaper vs Normal poly sinc lp with TPDF dithering using Goldensound files? BTW, sighted listening this, I can clearly hear the difference between the two. I'm currently training my ears so that...

Nobody has both and has done a direct A/B. It's not about driving it, it's more about the presentation and the balance of bass texture, slam and bass spatial cues and scale (all these three are also called grip/control) that separates an average Susvara amp to a God tier one. However, the Aegis...

Tubes are magical and have that vocal realism that only the best of SS amps like the MK465 can reproduce. Best part is that you don't even need the Aegis for that, even a similarly priced tube amp like my Forge provides that quality easily, but Aegis is such a versatile amp though and worth more...

If I had that setup, I'd be willing to upgrade to the Voila cable since we're already in a cost no object system

They're OCC silver cables, hence the price :beyersmile:

Any DDC would make quite a noticeable difference. Also, they're more susceptible to upstream cables so get a quality USB cable and a quality I2S cable for the Iris. I recommend Tubulus Concentus I2S and USB cables

Supra would be great! I don't use a DDC (no conversion, just reclocking) though so I went with the AQ Diamond which gave the best sighted listening improvements to my system

If the Iris behaves like the Schiit Unison USB from my DAC, I would predict that the USB Supra cable or even the Audioquest one that I use will be a great match to your system as well

Interesting observation especially coming from an iFi DDC which wasn't the case at all where the USB cable after mattered significantly more than the source to the iFi USB cable. My opinion is that I2S makes the DAC a slave to the clock from the IRIS, bypassing the master clock from the...

IMHO, if you're using I2S from your DDC to the Denafrips, it doesn't matter what brand of USB cable you use between the A6ME to the IRIS. Then again, my experience with the iFi iUSB 3.0 (not the IRIS) was that the USB cable between the source and DDC didn't affect the sound compared to the USB...

I did say the power gremlins before hehe

I could say the same for the Susvara for an endgame VFM headphone. Must be heard with the best amp and DAC combo to realize why it still stands as a timeless piece of a headphone

HE1000 Stealth/V2 as well :)

Cayin RU7

Need to factor components used for evaluation. Any flavor of Yggy can literally be preferable or higher rank to one or the other. MiB is particularly sensitive to components hence for some, it can be the worst or the best flavor out of the three

Not enough juice for most IEMs to drive them to full potential unfortunately

Yes. The stairsteps you provided from the F-5 filter a literally measured from the RCA outs of the Topping. You didn't miss anything. The reconstructed analog signal is outputted from the sigma-delta modulator as a stairsteps in the time domain if you use the F5 filter

The 7, 7.5, 8 are presentations that aligns more to the preferences of Marv, but those numbers will change quite a bit for others

Yggdrasil flavors vary quite a bit. Heck if the MiB or LiM is on a different chassis, you won’t be to tell that it’s a Schiit DAC just from hearing how they sound when comparing them to the A2

My own DBT ABX results does not support any of this at all, but goldensound's result does support the AES paper as a data point

Can't even pass Golden Sound test files with DBT ABX test myself just now for the second time again (1st one I managed 8/20), but interestingly enough this time, I managed to get 7 entries right correctly even though throughout the test I thought I heard the difference and was able to correctly...

That's natural, you express what you experience to a newcomer in the hobby, and that's what ultimately it boils down to without being weird or elitist!

Graph is not fake. Literally a DAC without digital filter or in this case the AKM supers slow roll-off outputs a stairstep sinusoidal wave in the time domain! That's the final audio reconstructed output in time domain that needs further clean up through extensive and expensive and inaccurate...

Agreed with everything you said! To me personally, when I talk to a person who is genuinely interested in the hobby, I don’t put my audio science hat on and just let the guy try out a couple of gears within his/her price range. It's off putting and weird for me to say to an newcomer yeah you're...

Measurements would clearly show that with significant differences crossing audibility threshold, otherwise component matching and synergy are an anecdotal experience only unique to that person but can also be experienced by others if their brain interpretation is pretty close in the spectrum...