Quote:
What if transparent meant "more analog"
Just a thought
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Indeed. This is where life gets really messy, and if we are not careful, all sorts of arguments break out. We quickly start to use lots of loaded terms. "Transparent" typically is taken to mean an antonym of opaque, or obscuring. Thus it is often loaded with an assumption of greater absolute accuracy. Yet "more analog" is clearly meaning "more like not-digital" or for all intents "more like tape." Which is by any metric not something that boasts absolute accuracy. But sounds great to a lot of ears.
(Pet peeve, digital systems are just as analogue as tape. The word is appallingly misused. But it got out the door decades ago, there is no getting it back in.)
I'm not interesting in dismissing anecdotal stories of improvements in sound, there is value in keeping track of them and deciding if there is some underlying pattern. But right now I'm highly sceptical that the simple "better clock, sounds better" answer is the underlying truth. It might be. But it almost certainly isn't going to be a simple answer. The interplay between the manner in which a modern ADC/DAC works, its clock and the jitter spectrum is going to ensure that. Knowing exactly the before and after conditions is crucial.
It could be placebo - never discount that - so eventually one always want to ground truth a theory in some properly conducted trials. But it is churlish and silly to dismiss these claims as placebo out of the box. Science never advances if you do that.
It could really be an important fixing of a critical range of phase noise spectrum that has come in under the radar. Digital systems are now highly complex (the messy grief ridden sort of complex) and the possibility of unfortunate second order effects occurring does increase. I don't think this is especially likely, but I'm not privy to the inner workings of the various bits of gear, so can't comment much more.
It could be an interesting euphonic effect that simply does achieve something akin to the well loved sound of tape. Hard to see how it is universally so, with so many different DAC and clock implementations, but maybe.
It could be a very interesting psycho-acoustic effect that allows the ear-brain to differentiate important musical information at the cost of damaging unimportant information that the ear never bothers with. Pretty unlikely, to say the least, but not to be dismissed out of hand.