I have been using a Sonos ZP90 for a year or so to stream FLAC from a NAS for most of my listening. Anyway the other day I purchased an Arcam rDAC because.......it was cheap. Anyway I spent last night listening to music fed from both the ZP90's analogue outputs and the optically connected rDAC by flicking between two inputs on my amplifier during the same piece of music. I used a STAX setup, a pair of Denon AH-D5000's from a meier audio corda cantate headphone amplifier and a pair of Sennheiser HD-650's fed from a vintage SA-7800 amplifier.
I was expecting a night and day experience with a dramatic improvement in sound quality however in reality it wasn't as clear cut. Initially I thought I had made an error with my connections as I could hear no discernible difference between the two. After some extended listening and lots of different genres of music some small differences became apparent. The biggest improvement was in the bass department which was much more noticeable on the Denon cans. In bass heavy tracks the low end was 'fuller' sounding with more weight. Another area of improvement was during fast moving tracks when a lot was going on, there was more separation and the music held together better and didn't sound as jumbled if that makes sense. However these changes were ever so slight and I'm not sure if they would have been so apparent if I had listened to one track, changed the setup and listened again or if I could have passed am ABX test.
Either I have cloth ears, my expectations of a £300 DAC were to high or the Sonos's internal DAC is not as bad a people make out.
I was expecting a night and day experience with a dramatic improvement in sound quality however in reality it wasn't as clear cut. Initially I thought I had made an error with my connections as I could hear no discernible difference between the two. After some extended listening and lots of different genres of music some small differences became apparent. The biggest improvement was in the bass department which was much more noticeable on the Denon cans. In bass heavy tracks the low end was 'fuller' sounding with more weight. Another area of improvement was during fast moving tracks when a lot was going on, there was more separation and the music held together better and didn't sound as jumbled if that makes sense. However these changes were ever so slight and I'm not sure if they would have been so apparent if I had listened to one track, changed the setup and listened again or if I could have passed am ABX test.
Either I have cloth ears, my expectations of a £300 DAC were to high or the Sonos's internal DAC is not as bad a people make out.