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发表于 2018-5-6 09:49:46
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To me, a DAC is just a DAC—until it wipes away digital glare and opens the listening door all the way, letting me enter the plain-truth wonderments of the recordings I collect. And the HoloAudio Spring DAC "Kitsuné Tuned Edition" (Green Label "99.99% Silver" O-Type transformer) aka Level3 did exactly that. Its sense of undamaged, I-am-there truthfulness let me relax and enjoy my CDs, and DSD and other hi-rez files, with renewed faith in digital sound.
While I'm reluctant to give too much credit to the Spring's R-2R architecture, I do suspect that the chief benefit of ladder DACs is that they don't require the aggressive noise-shaping and filtering of a delta-sigma DAC—which, in a general way, reminds me of those prescription drugs whose side effects are worse than the disease they're supposed to cure.
The Spring also reminded me how many audiophiles have pursued the latest tricks in hi-rez digital playback in the belief that there somewhere exists some form of recording-studio "master" that, could we get hold of it and our audio gear reproduce it, would allow us to experience what the artists and recording engineers and producers intended. Despite my above-mentioned LSD-DSD experience, I believe this view to be naãve.
According to legendary musician and record producer Don Was, now president of Blue Note Records, "what record producers and artists intend for the audience to hear is the first commercially released issue—not some hypothetical master tape or enhanced later version. By that sensible measure, every remastering, reissue, or change in format—whether from 78 to 331?3rpm, mono to stereo, LP to CD, CD to hi-rez, or hi-rez to MQA—is simply a lower-fidelity interpretation of the original. That's why I've never felt comfortable with remasterings. Now I wonder if the same might be said of delta-sigma's heavy processing. Such are the questions the HoloAudio Spring's unadorned naturalness reawoke in me.
The unaffected insightfulness of the HoloAudio Spring exposed more of what I imagine was originally aesthetically intended and encoded on my silver discs and invisible files. Consequently, it made me feel that my journey into digital audio may have only just begun.
Highly recommended.
Read more at https://www.stereophile.com/cont ... ICSpfB4f6YurFfDV.99 |
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