You say, "Forget about 96 or 192 and pick the best sounding component." Yet your post dismiss the dCS units because of "theory" rather than listening.
Moreover, you reduce the dCS to just upsampling (and dismiss it for that alone) while excusing the Audio Aero for having the same feature, choosing to look to its other features besides the upsampling. I take it that any dCS system lacks a quality transport, digital filtering, conversion, analogue stage, etc? At least with the dCS, if upsampling is so useless, one can run the dCS completely bypassing any upsampling. So now in theory the Audio Aero is at a disadvantage?
This thread shows many different opinions on high-end DACs. Some have compared components, some have not but really like what they already have, and some have a self-interest in promoting certain components. Where does the truth lie? At this level I think that the differences are more of personal taste than an objective better or worse.
Moreover, you reduce the dCS to just upsampling (and dismiss it for that alone) while excusing the Audio Aero for having the same feature, choosing to look to its other features besides the upsampling. I take it that any dCS system lacks a quality transport, digital filtering, conversion, analogue stage, etc? At least with the dCS, if upsampling is so useless, one can run the dCS completely bypassing any upsampling. So now in theory the Audio Aero is at a disadvantage?
This thread shows many different opinions on high-end DACs. Some have compared components, some have not but really like what they already have, and some have a self-interest in promoting certain components. Where does the truth lie? At this level I think that the differences are more of personal taste than an objective better or worse.