[Nordkapp]

I found after listening to a lot of types of DAC's over the years, that the reconstruction filtering in use by many gave me listening fatigue problems.  These were always linear phase filters in the designs.  Research at a UK college and by Wolfson Micro, Ayre and Meridian gave an interesting finding that the non-causal filter has psycho acoustic effects that the ear-brain system does not like.

This is very noticeable on digital recordings after they went away from the original analog filters used with A/D's that were successive approximation style and moved to linear phase.   Artifacts that I thought were processing turned out to be filtering related.

My preference is now for minimum phase reconstruction filter DAC's like Wolfson Micro (now Cirrus Logic), and Ayre.   AKM has some new minimum phase DAC's out as well. 

I think this is also why some folks prefer the older DAC's that do not have linear phase filtering, like the early Philips DAC's.

The minimum phase DAC's have all the resolution without the artifacts that make the linear phase filters sound hyper-detailed to me.

Good luck with the search.

Excellent info.

[charmerci]

My one complaint, as I am a dedicated headphone guy now, is because of the ridiculous level of intimate detail retrieval  (and I am referring to mid-fi to truly high end cans and DACS here), early digital recordings, to me, really are excruciating. I think that the effect the is not so noticeable on 2 channel stereo.

So much of it is the mastering. Interestingly, around the late '90's and early 2000's I really loved the 20-bit remastered CD's but when the 24-bit remastered CD came out soon after, I found them to be digitally harsher.

[Nordkapp]

So much of it is the mastering. Interestingly, around the late '90's and early 2000's I really loved the 20-bit remastered CD's but when the 24-bit remastered CD came out soon after, I found them to be digitally harsher.

Agreed. Those old 20 bit remasters do sound good, ala Chesky, Telarc, MOFI, Reference Recordings, et al.

[ctrlm]

I found after listening to a lot of types of DAC's over the years, that the reconstruction filtering in use by many gave me listening fatigue problems.  These were always linear phase filters in the designs.  Research at a UK college and by Wolfson Micro, Ayre and Meridian gave an interesting finding that the non-causal filter has psycho acoustic effects that the ear-brain system does not like.

This is very noticeable on digital recordings after they went away from the original analog filters used with A/D's that were successive approximation style and moved to linear phase.   Artifacts that I thought were processing turned out to be filtering related.

My preference is now for minimum phase reconstruction filter DAC's like Wolfson Micro (now Cirrus Logic), and Ayre.   AKM has some new minimum phase DAC's out as well. 

I think this is also why some folks prefer the older DAC's that do not have linear phase filtering, like the early Philips DAC's.

The minimum phase DAC's have all the resolution without the artifacts that make the linear phase filters sound hyper-detailed to me.

Good luck with the search.

Interesting.

I used to think that more resolution = ruthlessness, but now I'm not so sure that needs to be the case.

All of my previous DACs made some of my less than perfect (mainly 80s) recordings sound harsh and they rarely got played. I have since moved on to a modern variation R2R NOS DAC that has plenty of resolution but makes those recordings listenable again. Sure - you can still easily tell the good from the bad but there is now a "naturalness" or lack of "glare" in all my music compared to my Delta/Sigma DACs.

I agree that added artifacts can be mistaken for detail. Interestingly, my favourite previous DAC was a Primare DAC 30 which uses a Cirrus Logic chip. I never got comfortable with my Sabre chipped DACs which sounded great but IMO were not good for long term listening - especially with less than ideal recordings.