[Arny Krueger]

"Sonnova" wrote in message

On Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:38:47 -0700, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"ST" wrote in message


3 days ago I decided to hook up my old Theta DS Pro Gen
III DAC to my Marantz SA11s2 just for the fun of it. To
my surprise it sounded better (more to my liking) then
SA11s2.

The most obvious difference among DACs is their output
voltage. It often varies over a range of several dB or
more. A fractional dB difference in level may not be
perceived as a difference in loudness, but rather as
some other kind of quality difference.

Yep. When making any kind of sonic evaluation, one must
be careful to match all levels exactly. If one device
under test is even subliminally louder than another,
that's the one that the ear will favor as being the
better of the devices under evaluation. This holds true
for signal sources, amplifiying devices as well as
speakers.

Have you compared specs or done some bench checks to see
that the output of the two devices was the same within
0.1 dB?

That's difficult. Under real-world circumstances, I find
that 0.25 dB is about all one can realistically hope for.

IME matching electrical levels within 0.1 dB using steady tones is very
doable.