Quote Originally Posted by WmAx
That's a given. But you are the one that claimed only a professional sound engineer had to access to any suitable equipment. That may be laregely true for DSD, but not hi res PCM.
And you're the one who claims that it's easy to do these kinds of comparisons, yet you're expecting a hobbyist to acquire professional level equipment. I assume that you've tried this for yourself? And the inquiry had to do with SACD, and the only way to properly compare that with high res PCM and downconverted PCM is to use original master sources that have been simultaneously encoded into both DSD and PCM. To my knowledge, no such sources are available to end users.

Quote Originally Posted by WmAx
It seems you missed the point. Digital sampling theory and known perceptual limits associated with the capabilities, confined to 44.1khz sample rate PCM, suggest that a properly operating A-D-A chain will take any signal that is audible, convert to digital, back to analog with no perceptible difference. If the ADA creates a percievable(in a proper blind test, protocol, scrutinized) difference then the ADA chain is not optimal. You have to convert the DSD to analogue to HEAR it. Take this analogue stream and feed it to the ADA......

Since the DSD is supposed to be so good according to many, then surely the ADA will make an audible difference, eh? This would prove that 44.1 is not optimal for playback, if adible degradation occurs in the process. If no audible degradation occurs, then why? The answer is obvious.

-Chris
Your statements are theoretical, and since you're so into proposing practical approaches for testing the theory, I'm simply noting that your approach still leaves variables unaccounted for. If you use a DSD master source and convert it to 44.1/16, then you're introducing a new variable into the chain. If you use a PCM or analog source, how are you going to get it into the SACD format if the tools aren't available to consumers?