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One thing to be mindful of when listening to these files is that its easy to fool your ears by listening to the production quality of each mix rather than listening for what the converter is changing. It's important to continually A/B against the original mix file & ignore any negative aspects of the original mix.
A very detailed converter will likely reveal more flaws with the mix than one that has more jitter or smearing. In these cases its possible to think a less detailed converter sounds better.
The better designs do have a superior transient response, tighter low end (often perceived as extending lower), more precise imaging & improved low level detail. Essentially the veil is lifted off many aspects of the true source (for better or worse). Of course to hear these things well you need a revealing monitoring DAC, great amp/s & full range detailed monitoring (speakers & acoustics). I've found the Duntechs excellent at revealing transient detail & they have a very precise image so I find the differences become more obvious to me listening to converters in this environment. Transient response does translate to any system though & I find that very desirable in a converter especially considering how many transients are lost in the pursuit of loud levels. Compression, clipping, limiting, saturation & further downstream processing from Mp3 compression & broadcast compound the issue further so if you can preserve the detail as much as possible before it gets turned into Mp3 or shoved through an Orban Optimod the better it's going to sound coming out the other end imo.
It would also be interesting to know whether a converter with an excellent clock may also correct some of the jitter issues of a digital source (mix). Is it possible that it may end up being tighter, clearer & less smeared than the original source after passing through the conversion process? I'm not suggesting if something was compressed or processed that it would undo some of those characteristics just suggesting that it may remove jitter from the signal which could possibly improve low level detail & smear from prior conversion somewhat. Anyone care to comment on the possibility that could occur?
So we've only had one brave person comment on all the files... any more?
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