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Originally Posted by oatmeal769 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
That's totally cool if you have the bucks ... I don't want to waste money on differences that are subjective at best.
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Well first of all, buy everything used (or demo, or B stock), that's a must. Retail prices are indeed insane.
But the only real answer is, as I said in my post, and AtomikPi said too, is to listen. Audition, long and relaxed. If it sounds better in the audition, it will most likely sound better over the long run in your home.
You'll never know if the other unit would have sounded as good, since you won't have both units, but you are simply trying to spend money wisely and make quality-price trade-offs. Reading specs, test bench measurements, reviews, forums, and finally doing auditions is -- as we all know -- the tried and true approach, as long as you have your defenses up and are on the lookout for snake oil.
If you can't tell them apart in an A/B/X, that might or might not give you pause, since opinions are divided as to whether or not such a result is an accurate predictor of additional (or not) enjoyment at home, since both the placebo effect and the "short term listening" effect of tests are hard to control for. But if you like it better at home over the long run, that is all that matters. And the badge and price do influence your enjoyment at home, even if we pretend they do not, so test open, not blind ... e.g., audition.
I know the Wadia guys are brilliant engineers, formerly with the digital audio division of HP, working in good old Saline, Michigan (where I used to live, what a coincidence!), and they understand digital-to-analog conversion with the best of them. I know that whatever bitstream some whacky mastering engineer might throw at their firmware they have already catered for in the lab and in their simultations. This gives me confidence ... "I've got it covered" I think when I pop a new CD in. A/B/X testing and even reality plays no role in this.
If you set a budget and proceed this way -- research, audition, buy used or at discount -- you will love the results and be way of ahead of a slave to A/B/X, regardless of how right their tests are. Yes. you may have been influenced by branding and ads, and you might have been able to achieve the same SQ for a bit less, but you set your budget and stayed within it, and it is very unlikely that you could have gotten better SQ for the same money (since this you would have uncovered in your research and auditioning).
See the point? You live your life listening to your gear, not doing A/B/X, so do your auditions the way you live. "Best sound at a given budget" makes sense ... the fact that you
might have been able to spend less is not necessarily important. Maybe you were fooled by the badge in an audition, and an A/B/X would have let you buy the cheaper gear and save some bucks. So what? 'Cause maybe not! Maybe over the long run the expensive unit would have satisfied more, either because the A/B/X test was not a good predictor of long-term listening quality, or because non-SQ factors come in to play (like me and Wadia). It just doesn't matter if you set a budget and carefully audition. This is life, not an academic paper.
Don't get me wrong -- I love statistical sensory testing and am deeply involved in test protocols (I happen to think A/B/X is deeply flawed, but that's another matter). I am seeking to uncover some truth, at least in regards to my own ears. But I don't buy my personal gear this way ... although at some point I might take any findings I uncover into account, but by no means will these be the only consideration.
MrOutside said he can't find a way to audition the DACs -- I say: seek out meets! All the DACs he needed were at Can Jam '09 ... Benchmark was there, as were many others.
Sorry for the long post -- I think this is #900 and I wanted to make it meaningful. But who's counting?
