Absolute top tier DAC for standard res Redbook CD

Victims of marketing.

A few years ago at RMAF we held a contest (with some pretty cool prizes) to determine if people could guess the resolution of of five songs.

We had a 25 song playlist printed on a single page with columns for song names and check boxes to the right for "16/44.1" and "24/96" and "24/192." We literally passed out a dozen clip boards and had a pile of sharpened pencils at the info table when you enter.

Each Attendee had to stay for five songs and mark a check next to what resolution they thought each song was. We had a few hundred Attendees enter the contest.

How many songs out of five do you think the average person got right?

NONE.

We had about a dozen prizes and had trouble finding enough people that got ONE out of five guesses correct. We had to give one of the prizes to a person that crossed out and wrote over but their crossed out guess was right (seriously).

Not one person could even get two right.

BTW, more than half of the songs we used were nothing more than well recorded 16-bit 44.1KHz Reed Book CD rips.

What does that tell you?

What does that tell you?

That my Amy > Bob > Amy > Bob test is best.

I believe the quality of a recording is something like over 80% the quality of the original master and less than 20% the specific digital format and resolution it is released in.

Quality of a recording vs the digital decoding..
I recently had the pleasure of auditioning a Marantz SA-10 ($7000)
Which uses a version of DSD to decode everything. Turning the other formats into DSD then into music.
One of my complaints about SACD is they all seem to have no ’room’ played in. The music all seems to ’magically’ float out of a black hole.
Stripped of any ambience. Which I find really annoying. (so I don’t own very many SACD, but have owned a Sony SCD777ES since new)
The interesting thing using the Marantz SA-10 to play CDs from another machine (via Toslink) is the results still have all the room.
So the loss of space in SACD (IMO) has to be in the creation of the disc. and not the decoding!

And that music from the SA-10 sounds better (particularly the treble) than any other digital I have heard.(I do have to say it is subtle, and not some magical WOW. But enough to blow $7K to buy one for myself, since no other digital device has managed to do this before for my ears)
The Sony SCD777ES was my reference player. Soon as I get the Marantz I ordered, the Sony will be relegated to the dust bin of old stuff I used to use.

One of the interesting things about the Marantz playing CDs.. With it each CD really has it's own sound. Used to be CDs sort of all somehow sounded the same. With the Marantz they all sound different! And some are like 'Super CDs' with way more info in them, and some others are just like they were played by my old DAC. With most having something extra..
I never noted that before I heard the differences.. Now I am surprised I never noticed it.