dacs that I have had in my system - a listing

Why do you think Magenpans could provide you with the best judgment about DAC’s compared to comparing them using other speakers?

because when properly set up and properly driven, they are among the most honest, pure, transparent transducers out there, letting you hear quite precisely what is being fed to them with very minimal editorialization, for better or worse

Do you think that your conclusions, made with the Maggies, could apply, ceteris paribus, to very different kinds of speakers?

yes absolutely (once again, with the critical caveat that said speakers are set up to perform properly in room)

over this period, i would on occasion swap the harbeths, spendors and proacs back in, just for fun... doing so didn’t change my takeaways about the dacs i was using... other than preferring a little more treble energy for the harbeths, and touch less for the proacs or spendors

@jjss49 I had a similar type of question about the testing process used. It's helpful to learn about the additional cone driver speakers referenced.  Thanks for sharing that information. Those are some really nice speakers to test with and compare dacs. 

If I may ask, and not that it was necessary nor do I know of your past setups,  by chance were any high efficiency 100db horn type speakers with low watt tube amps used around the time you were testing these dacs?  If so, what kind of differences did you happen to notice with treble energy, mids, or bass for that matter...

I honestly don’t think speaker choice is the most important thing here although using the very transparent Maggies seems to be a very good choice. In these comparisons the most interesting info to me are the relative differences between the DACs rather than the absolute strengths that may shine in one speaker type or another, and I think that this was born out when @jjss49 intermittently introduced other very different speakers and the relative differences still prevailed and were largely speaker agnostic. This is what makes this thread and feedback so powerful — you can reasonably expect the same relative strengths in your system between DACs regardless of your speakers or even your system. Very valuable stuff indeed!

Yep! I think all the questions show interest and great admiration of someone truly having a passion for self-learning and validation in ones own system(s) versus taking anyone’s word for it. Just gotta love it. If you can do it, it’s the only way to go.

The rest of us tag along trying to leverage this information and experience in different ways to learn vicariously through @jjss49, with great appreciation!

@jjss49 Thanks for the clarification. It seems that the Maggies were good for determining differences between the Dacs and also transferable to other speakers.