The Law of Diminishing Digital Returns

I have found CD players in the $200 range are good enough for my ears. I have several with different DAC's and a DAC on my pre-amp also. I have compard them carefully and the difference, if there is one that is audible, is not enough to be meaningful to me.

In comparison, I have a sub working at below 50 Hz and I can tell the difference when this is turned off, even on simply male vocals and at very low SPL levels. I find speakers improve dramatically up to around $1500. Above $1500 the improvements definitely diminish but are still audible. Unlike, CD players and SS amps, the differences between speakers of similar high quality from two manufacturers(at any price) are almost always immediately apparent and audible.

To me CD digital audio, after 25 years of evolution, is at such a good and consistent level of reproduction that it is now the recording/mastering studio quality, my room and the speakers that make the big differences for me.

What are "tin ears" missing?

In the early days of CD, expensive high order analog filters were necessary. Nowadays, oversampling allows for very simple and cheap analog filters to do the job.

In practive this means that even the cheapest DAC's have THD + Noise of less than 0.002%. An expensive high quality pro studio grade 24 bit DAC might get you down to THD + Noise of less than 0.0007% (roughly one third less noise and distortion).

Since high-end speakers typically have a THD of 0.3% at best, an improvment in the third decimal place on a DAC seems rather fruitless.

All DAC's, even cheap ones, have distortion numbers that are hundreds of times less than compared to a speaker or to what people can typically detect in blind tests. Perhaps they only test people with "tin ears".

For those who seek audible improvement from the third decimal place of one percent of distortion and noise, my hat is off to you; you must have amazing hearing! Do you find even the very best speakers disappointing?