Yes. I'm playing with it now... It's ok, not as good as the Smyth but better than nothing, and at the price there's no comparison.   I'm a bit bummed that it's so "consumer" oriented, i.e. the inputs are not exposed in the Rappr software (it automagically accepts 2, 5 or 8 channels in and maps...

Well, it makes a difference _sometimes_, and that's the point. I've chatted with both Monty and Ethan over email about this (and other issues) just last year and they did agree that it's something that is so good and free that there's no reason not to do it. 16-bit resolution is indeed...

Using dither is best practice. It's virtually free these days and there is no penalty for using it. You can choose not to use it and get inferior results. Many recordings are pretty poorly made, that is no reason to advocate poor practice just because most people won't notice.

If this was a SOX list, that might be meaningful. A software package's default action is usually the easiest, not the best. I have posted enough links to verified research - where would you like to challenge that?

  The "problems of truncation" are completely solved by dither - learn the theory and put it into practice properly, as per the papers I linked to.   I did not confuse normalisation and dithering just because I put them in the same post, as you have suggested. Truncating 24-bit audio to...

Oh the STOOPID editor has starred out Stanley Lip-shi-tz name in the link above because it has crap in it - GROAN!   Here is the link http://www.ece.rochester.edu/courses/ECE472/resources/Papers/Lip*s*h*i*tz_1992.pdf - remove the *s manually...

RRod et al. The only decent way to turn 24-bit audio into 16-bit is to dither it properly. For information on this see:   http://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ9IXSUzuM - same as above if you don't have the codec. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PydUQrka4pc  ...

  I have no problem with the theoretical possibility that 24-bit audio might "feel" better than 16-bit, i.e. the perception is fairly subconscious. However, of the many listening test that have been conducted (thousands or only hundreds? I've lost count) there would be a result of preference...

Thanks ginelcy, the gamma2 is a nice dac to be sure - but it does not match my needs; volume control, additional input (preamp functionality - just realised i miswrote that in the op), etc... if i was looking for a standalone dac it would be a definite contender, but alas i'm stuck with the...

but mrarroyo, i've spent many _days_ searching, and i can find no one who has listened to these two items (beresford 7520 and citypulse 7.2 dx), and not even any thread where these two are discussed... the beresford has a lot of fans, but so does the other. i suspect that neither is a really bad...

So, I'm in s similar situation now, with quite specific requirements... So I'm looking at the Citypulse DA-7.2 DX II DAC / Amp and the Beresford TC-7520 DAC/Pre-amp with headphone amplifier... Has anyone listened to these 2 side by side? Or maybe against the (Oritek) Zhaolu. I'm using optical...