On Wed, 19 Sep 2018 10:13:42 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

In my search I found DACs ranging in price fro about $5(!) to $26,000.
I finished up paying about $500.

any of which can be used with a digital headphone jack and whatever
headphones/speakers you want.

not that there is an audible difference, except perhaps the $5 one.

Lots of people think you are wrong. I certainly do.

even more do not.

some might *think* they can hear a difference, but they can't.

objective double-blind tests consistently show that people do no better
than chance. in other words, they're guessing.

You have used that argument several times, applied to different
aspects of audio. I bet you can't cite an example relating to DACs on
high level equipment.

I already had a DAC in my Roland Duo Capture EX which I bought for use
as an ADC for transcribing vinyl discs. Its DAC was acceptable but in
the end I finished up buying an Arcam irDAC-II which is a middle of
the road DAC. It made an audibly better job of converting digital to
analog than did the Roland. Mind you, I was listening through good
gear.

confirmation bias.

When I unwittingly leave the wrong one turned on I can immediately
hear the difference. It's not imagination.

then it's defective or it's intentionally adding something to the
sound, neither of which is desirable.

Or one of them is intentionally(?) not adding something to the sound.

regardless, with a digital headphone jack, you can use whatever dac you
want. with an analog headphone jack, you're stuck with whatever is in
the device.

Yep.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens