Maybe it IS all in the DAC chips

If a guy is chasing dacs and cables too much... it generally implies that his speaker is sht, room is also lackluster and in need of treatment.

@richardbrand 

"In your context, they refers to TI or Texas Instruments.  In 2000 TI spent $7.6-billion to acquire Burr-Brown for its expertise especially in analogue / digital conversion.  So TI has hardly been "the preeminent semiconductor developer and manufacturer forever".

In the same way, ESS and AKM seem to have leapfrogged TI.

These days the vast majority of high-end chips are made in Taiwan, not the USA.

Getting back to dac architectures, there are fundamental differences between say resistance ladder dacs, including R2R, and sigma-delta dacs which are closely aligned with DSD.  An R2R dac cannot handle DSD natively - you don't need a ladder when there's only one level angry.

If you are not convinced by dac specifications and data sheets, look at the package / pin diagrams.  If there is no pin to indicate the input is DSD, and the dac can handle PCM, then it won't handle DSD at full native resolution without external conversion to PCM.

My warning to others is that some Burr-Brown dacs in some high-end SACD players do not natively process DSD.  I wasted money on the Burr-Brown equipped Reavon player when the equivalent Reavon transport would have done the same job for $1,000 less.  Magnetar buyers should check the included dacs or risk being disappointed.

Can you hear the difference?  I certainly could"

It's nice to know you think you're well-informed Richard but even better if you could communicate it in an even remotely linear fashion. Again, as I said earlier about lengthy dissertations reiterating what commenters have already said.

Well I've just "downgraded" to the AVM 50 and I have to say I like the sound better.  It's very hard to make an apple to apple comparison as I'm going from an AVR with mixed use of the preamp outputs to a processor with fully external amps.  I'm also using Neo6 for 2 channel audio.

While the AVM 50 is a gigantic PITA to use and configure, the audio quality is much better and it gives me back a pure analog input, allowing me to bring my Mytek DAC back into the mix. 

I have found the DACs to be very hard to predict vis a vis sound quality. I run a Hegel HD12,  Moon 280D, and a Classe DAC1 in various systems and have an original Arcam Black Box somewhere and have found it difficult to assess them even swapped into the same system.

I recently found my soul mate T+A DAC 200 and use the PCM side, which uses Burr Brown 1795 chips. It's so good.