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Easy to discriminate between DAC ??

do not have the possibility in making A/B tests so i need to plug-deplug every time.
So far tested 4 different DAc but not so easy to find the better.
The sound timbre is really very similar, what I found different is the following:
- The slightly darker/warmer is Theta Chroma
- The slightly more transparent is CEC DAC integrated in TL 51Z MKII
- The slightly more nuance devoted is Swissonic DA96
- The clearly more aggressive is Minprint DI-Port
So what??
Can it be that the oldest one of the group,Theta old fashion 16 bit still sound very modern ?
How to make a jump in quality ?
Or it will always been a question of the personal taste of sound to make the choice ??

I would love to exchange opinions about and sorry for the elaborated question
Tks.
ad010685

Showing 1 response by ad010685

ad010685 OP
102 posts
 
Benthar I can't really isolate it more than the 1 mt cables.
The comparison is made with same cables apart when I compare the dac vs the integrated CD player (CEC) because in such a case I have one additoonal step made with a cheap SPDIF that is probably to my perceive a analog cable 75 ohm not the best for digital signal.
But i can't believe that changing it with a proper cale all the DAC's will improve dramaticaly vs the integrated Cd player. what's the rational here ?
You know i wanted to buy expensive SPDIF cable only when decided for the right one. This because some of them accept AES /EBu and the integrated CD that i could use a transport only will have a preferred digital out in AES. That will be the cable, but sometime dac like theta chroma get only the spdif, the one cheap I have today.
Tks for further comments and i will try to pute cones below. Would you go for rigif decoupling or soft decoupling ? you said cones so I guess go for rigid

At the end all of them have been tested without decoupling .
Cheers
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