AKM makes the best DACs

Our OP first says, "It is a terrible idea to judge a DAC based on the chip. I don’t think consumers should ever do that." And then he goes on to do exactly that

Hi @melm,

What you are missing in your argument is the sequence of events.  I think it's a bad idea to go looking for DAC's with a certain chip set and relying on that to decide whether to buy it.  This is not something I've ever done or recommended.  I am not  recommending the purchase of any DAC based on the components.

I'm doing the opposite.  In thinking of the DACs I've liked or ended up purchasing I  realized that for the most part in the last 10 years or so they have been based on AKM chips.

The order here matters a great deal in the statement.

He hasn’t heard most others.

Well, I haven't heard every DAC, that's for sure.  Don't get upset I didn't say ESS.  That doesn't mean yours isn't a very fine exemplar which does better than what I've heard. 

Peace.

AKM? wow. Always preferred it vs. AK47

Still an R2R/ladder dac fanatic.

To not take a off center system sound, and then add in an AKM, and say it is perfect. Or other dacs of similar nature and type.

To consider that the ladder dacs and the like get the HF and detail aspects most correct and then design or build a correctly voiced sytem around a fundamentally more correct center of sound quality.

To understand what when we add or subtract anything in our systems we have to 'carry the 1', and compensate for knowing we have an accumulation of off center parts, in their handling of the small details in the signal, where our actual human hearing and discernment --lies.

To obtain and work with multiple ladder and r2r dacs, discrete dacs of that nature to find and understand their central points....and then, like the Spanish inquisition, 'come in again', and rebuild with this more correct origin.  and finally arrive at actual destination-like points, instead of the constant circular dance of never getting there and the window/door is too small. made small by the stack of off kilter additions. (where everything becomes either too dull or too screechy, in a vary small range of change. When this happens it tells us that we are doing it wrong. even worse, is dull and screechy at the same time. Which happens alarmingly often.

Thus, to get there, we have to start with the most neutral and wide capacity source point possible, and then make the intelligent and well considered choices past that.

In my experience, that happens with ladder/R2R/discrete dacs.

To not take a off center system sound, and then add in an AKM, and say it is perfect. Or other dacs of similar nature and type.

I literally don't know what this means.

You seem to be working hard to be linear in your interpretation of words and their possible meanings.

Audio uses engineering to sculpt it's scientific explorations of it's core intent: the exploration of more.

Exploration of science is by necessity and reality, philosophical in nature and type. As philosophy is the parent and origin of science ...and we can't get bigger than and explore science - without philosophy.

Ergo, philosophy is core and endemic to audio.

So, I made what i thought was a reasonable warning to be careful about technologies as absolutism.

which, you did not do. you stated your experience tended to center around a certain view or point. Nothing wrong with that in my book.

but... let's take it one step further back and explore again.

What we find when we look at the market, is that there is a strong tendency to find the peak of the market, in accuracy and correctness, in digital, centers around ladder and/or R2R and/or discrete dacs. (they being different names for the same type of DAC)