Well, if we had more time, we could have done a few cable comparisons when John151 visted my place. All of our listening was done with the Groneberg ICs, excepting the brief turntable play.
Now, for my contrarian nature to surface. The IC in one's home represents only a small fraction of the artist-to-audience path. There's a lot of cable (of differing quality, repute, etc.) from the mic through the recording process. The division point between analog and digital paths is a function of the studio, recording engineer's preferences, and producer's influence. So you could just as easily have a thousand feet of Belden pro-grade cable transporting analog, or esoteric stuff (Cardas, et. al.) feeding a mic-pre with A/D conversion before getting anywhere near a console. Throw in some more variables like improperly terminated digital cables, and audio integrity gets dicey quickly, long before it gets to your CD.
Is this reason to throw up one's arms and buy Radio Shack's cheapest? No. But it is reason to think twice about spending the big bucks and question the relevance of the golden-ears' raves about the latest $5K esoterica when used with any source whose pre-recorder cabling and paths aren't precisely known.
I went with the Gronebergs because of the synergy cited by many on this board and, frankly, the modest price Klaus charges for a quality product. Not having the time or $$$ to do true double-blind testing of multiple ICs, I just went ahead with a concensus item. No regrets yet.
Karl
