A/B DAC comparison

Hi, yes I have tried them all and to be honest I'm still at it!

I'm trying lots of different CDs as well - with varying tonal and production qualities - so this just adds to the list of variables.

It's going to take me years! lol

Prelininary findings:

There is a difference between the Sony Dac and the Cambridge Dac (and yes it is the latest one)

To my ears the Cambridge is a tiny bit clearer all round, a bit punchier - a bit sharper - on whatever filter setting.

However, on a lot of my CDs - especially commercial 'pop' stuff that seems to me to be poorly mastered and overly bright in the first place, this can be almost painful to the ears and the Sony sounds a bit 'nicer'.

As for the filters - there is definately a difference between the 'linear phase' (the top one) and the 'steep' (the bottom one) with the 'steep' souinding a bit muted at the frequency extremes. However, I can't detect a difference between the linear phase and the 'mimimum phase' (the middle one).

Having said all that, all this is going through a fairly new Quad 99 pre + 909 power and I swear that the bass response is geting better all the time.

It's all getting a bit confusing if I'm honest

All I can say is that, with decent quality recordings, I'm quite happy to leave the DAC magic on linear phase and since I got the Quads I'm doing the classic thing of going through my CD collection and discovering new sounds - and it's all rather marvelous - I really love the way these amps drive my Mission 753 freedoms.