this is something you believe about yourself, but an oxymoron for everyone else.
Its meaning has distorted as much as how the word hacker is distorted.
Yes, I love listening to music and quality audio, but don’t have a soundtrack to benchmark systems. My bar is simple: Do I enjoy what I hear? It doesn’t have to fit into a recipe. It should be enjoyable, period.
A pair of Apple AirPods can be as enjoyable as two $10K speakers powered by a separate stack costing $20K. It’s akin to loving that hole in the wall restaurant as well as that Michelin rated one. Both are enjoyable in its own sense.
Well, I use the same amp, turntable and tuner for the last 30 years, and the same CD player and speakers for the last 10 years.
Changed the speakers since I had no space for the older Akai set, and replaced the CD player since the older one was acting up.
Replaced the Logitech Bluetooth receiver for a Fiio DAC last week since I found one for a bargain.
Everything is connected with high quality yet 30 year old cables.
I believe that’s a pretty sane evolution for someone who grown up with music, and performed some.
THe biggest difference that most people hear is EQ. (oh these are very bassy, or too clean, etc, etc)
The people that have external DACs are almost certainly hearing a difference in EQ rather than _quality_. Is that a problem? for me I couldn't care less. However when that starts bleeding into advice or gatekeeping, then it becomes an issue.
(I am a former sound technician for both recording studio (analogue and digital) theatre and TV)
Given the same set of speakers, I'm pretty sure that almost anything I throw in to the chain will sound pretty similar (unless it's designed to color the sound some way). This is one of the reasons why I don't plan to change any parts of it .
For me the DAC has some serious benefits in the sound quality department, though. First, it doesn't have the 3dB loss like the Logitech, second I can stream AAC or aptX to it, which really sounds better than SBC, given the song is mastered correctly and has the detail which can be carried by the codec itself.
I listen to some of the albums I have as CDs in streaming services and even though it's labeled as "lossless" I can hear that the files are butchered pretty badly.
