Death blow to Toshiba's SRT/SUC/Res+ upconverter: It doesn't work in real-time!

[Woody]

Originally Posted by CraigW

Some of his latest rant were on how lossless was just marketing spin and how hand tuned DACs from Mark Levinson with a lossy format were better than a true lossless system without touched by god DACs.

Sorry, there is a lot of snakeoil in the AV business, but hand tuned DACs ranks right up there with Monster cable marketing BS. The steps between levels is so small with 24-bit high resolution DACs, I don't think someone can handtune them reliably. Don't you think the mass produced DACs are being QA'd so you know you are getting a quality DAC?

Last I checked my Onkyo 805 has some of best Burr Brown DACs available, the 1796 chipset. Good DACs today are the rule not the exception.

No offense, (I dislike Amir as much as the next guy) but it is easy to find DACs that decode 2 ch music better than the DACs in many of today's receivers. You don't have to buy them from a company like Levinson either.

Companies like Arcam have been making very good CD players with excellent DACs for years (and not too expensive). A quick A/B comparison will show that their DACs, along with the implementation of them are better than a mass-market receiver's.

Even copmletely inexperienced folks who don't initially hear a difference can be told what to listen for and recognize a difference quickly.