I think he has some biases from his feedbacks. You are asking for 3 different technology here. I am not an expert about them, but I did read about them. Here is what I found out
1/ R2R2000 is a resistor ladder type of conversion. Resistor ladders are full of errors and mistakes, and without a good FPGA+firmware, it would sound really really bad. Ask Rob from a Chord, and read his posts for more details
2/ Chord Hugo 2 is neither Resistor ladder, nor S-Master. Chord is Pulse-Arrays. It is more similar to S-Master but also different. Chord uses FPGA to control these Arrays (multiple elements of pulse driver), while Sony has it all built-In onto a chip. Lately, Sony mentioned that their S-Master limitations did not allow them to achieve higher power output. This limitations is not existed with Chord
3/ S-Master, is it Sony own just as much as Chord own design. It is also Pulse Code drivers as
@Kira69 showed above, but my guess is that it was designed under a different method and language. Chord is increasing their element counts where as Sony has been improving the S-Master too, but not sure what they had been doing
All 3 technologies are very similar to Non Over Sampling, which is not found in any Delta-Sigma as they are natively oversampling. However, to claim that Delta-sigma has more distortions is more like biasing. Theoretically speaking, Non over Sampling has more distortions, and lower details, lower dynamic range with even higher noise floor but higher analog natural resemblances . By applying oversampling, the noise floor can be pushed further out of human hearing range while retaining and extracting all the details within the meaningful dynamic range, and ofcourse with different modulations, there are different sound signatures.
From what I have been observing, anything NOS that is done well, it has a very natural and organic timbres that is just right, for example WM1Z. For Delta-Sigma that is done right, the dynamic punches and bites are excellent, but details could be a little bit over saturated and less natural or less organic. About distortions, NOS would distort more than Sigma-Delta. But that is just me and my experiences. Neither has it done perfectly, you just need to know your preferences, and how you enjoy them. I have both, and R2R7 DAC and an LKS004 DAC, and previously had WM1Z, but traded for Dx200Titanium (unexpected)
