$1200 vs $200 cd players

[theaudiohobby]

Best to say simply, as per Mr Colloms, that the DAC sounded like music rather than "digital". I'd trade that for transparency any day! I'm not in this hobby to listen to measurements and what the objectivists believe is accurate, particularly if one chooses, say, a cheap plastic CD player over the Audio Note due to its measurements. It appears that RGA is in the same boat. It's the old argument of whether to listen to a believeable reproduction of actual instruments or a very much NOT believable reproduction of a processed signal.
.

An old cliche, as per my reply to RGA, read Martin Collums (not my favoured reviewer by any means) et al comments about the Naim CDS3 that cost less than half of the AN DAC 5, measures much better, is more transparent, does not sound digital (i.e. does not ring) and sounds like music. It is a pity that most of the folks who claim that they only want to listen to the music, measurements be damned are actually the most gullible and they are just too gullible to see it , pun intended. A digital component does not have to measure atrociously to sound good and vice versa. I restricted my comments to Naims and the AN DAC in order to directly address RGA comments and the last time I listened to my rig, it was giving a believable reproduction of actual instruments if that was what was captured on the recording. As Jim Austin put it 'If it is not in the recording, where is it? Comments like 'believeable reproduction of actual instruments vs. believable reproduction of a processed signal' have absolutely no merit when analysed very closely because if they did, the quality of a recording will cease to be an issue and arguments about analog/digital recordings etc would have very little merit.