agree on this, i owned the dx160 and the hiby r6 and the zx507 at one point together and for some reason despite being bit perfect on the dx160 and the r6 while streaming, the zx507 still sounded better. This is both on tidal masters and qobuz. Add the fact that the dx160 and hiby r6 had wonky ldac implementations made it a quick decision for me to ditch the two in favor of the sony. Almost a year afterwards, still enjoying my zx507, and sometimes even use it as source on my marantz stereo receiver instead of my mojo-poly combination. Sometimes its not just about the specs, it is how its implemented
Yes implementation is key to sound quality. In digital audio, there is a common misconception that everything is just ONES and ZEROS, A=B, Theorems are always right, as long as you follow Nyquist Theorem to the dot, your audio output will sound EXACTLY as it was recorded. However in my opinion, in reality, things are not so straight forward, there is a lot more underlying interactions between the physics of electricity and materials that conduct electricity and how that affects timing and response strength of music signals. That is why burn-in time and warm up time exist. But of course, your audio gear must be of high resolving power and your ears must be discerning enough to notice all of these sound differences.
What I feel is that most of these misconception is likely the result of the lack of understanding of the rather complex effects of electromechanics and how it affects audio input and output sound quality.
If digital audio can be as perfect as those believe, then the market of audiophile products should not exist as audio output should be perfect even with the cheapest dac/recording mic out there and people won't need to spend the extra money to buy mega expensive headphones, iems, dacs and daps to listen to music.
Fact is, we live in an imperfect world, there are many things in the audio chain that affect the quality of the recording and resulting audio output. Especially for digital audio, there is a rather difficult problem with time smearing, which does affect the clarity of music being played. If you don't understand the effects and how time smearing sounds like, this video does provide a very good simulated example of how it sounds and explanation.
Sony's DSEE, MQA, Chord/Rob Watt's WTA Filter, Schiit's time- and frequency-domain optimized digital filter all are algorithms and oversampling systems trying to correct/address what is wrong with digital audio's time smearing. Other than quality of the components, what you are paying for in high end digital audio gear is for the processing power that is required to run all these complex sound altering algorithms/filters and oversampling systems.
I think for Sony, they are well ahead of other audiophile companies in terms of developing new audio technology. Most other audiophile companies are still improving on digital oversampling through fixed function algorithms and improvements to computational power, Sony is already ahead by making use of Artificial Intelligence for bit depth expansion, oversampling and the further development of 360 spatial audio.
Wish Sony would develop their next flagship Walkman soon, I believe it will be a game changer for sure, given how much innovative technology that Sony has in it's "war chest".
