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I could be wrong, but this seems like Sennheiser's best performing over-ear headphone based on FR compliance with a popular target, THD, and phase distortion.

Good enough, but not the best value. Can get a Hypex NC502MP for less with more power, better technical performance, and from a company with a less damaged customer support rep.

Whereas their older models had very little, with the HE-6 series having truly impressively low figures. Bizarre.

Although I'm no Amir, the answer is 100% no. In terms of sound quality, the fully transparent Pre90 will sound no different than the fully transparent A90 Discrete serving as a preamp. Although the A90 Discrete's preamp performance wasn't measured in the review here, it should be very similar to...

Yeah I've had the E3 since launch day, and all things considered it's still unrivaled to my ears. My EQ'd K371 isn't as perfect especially in the higher frequencies. Although my Zero:2 sounds great, I just don't favor in-ears for comfort reasons.

The biggest downside being: the Topping A70 Pro and L70 are better and cost much less.

Rehabilitated audiophile

I saw Topping at Canjam NYC, but none of these new products were there from what I could see (didn't have time to visit their stand). Looking forward to any announcements tomorrow though.

I expect ES9039 based DACs to still measure best. SMSL has been making more audiophool oriented products with their current VMV flagships, now it's Topping's turn I suppose.

The marketing for these products markets performance heavily. 8 years ago we had the ODAC, and I think superb Gustard DACs and Benchmark too. We have a lot more now but there were good options then. The Bricasti M1 does predate all of what I just said though.

I'm not sure if the other person was saying you can no longer buy the M1 SE as configured in this review (only with the MDx upgrade), but indeed that's not even an objective sonic upgrade. M1 Series II seems like mostly just an aesthetics upgrade, since it's the same DACs, topology, and output...

I like the miniDSP SHD in that price range. Sure it's outperformed technically (and inaudibly) by the SMSL SU-1 in terms of pure DAC performance, but it gives you powerful DSP including the Dirac Live suite, subwoofer management, and it's a streamer (an extremely limited streamer though).

The main takeaway from these reviews always seems to be that these products are debunked. You can get better technical performance from an $80 SMSL SU-1. Not to mention anyone looking at the review index can sort by recommended, or by SINAD. I didn't know if the person you quoted was referring...

This definitely has a wider selection of filters, but between its min phase filters and the filter in the $80 SMSL SU-1, nothing there will lead to objectively better performance for the Bricasti. Subjectively better, perhaps depending on the person.

I agree, the data supports this. I have also done level matched blind testing between a popular $10k MSRP DAC to a $900 SMSL DAC and was unable to hear any differences. I now use a $220 Schiit DAC; didn't get to blind test this against either of those but there's certainly no hint of an audible...

This is not the M1 Series II, but they will all perform pretty much identically since they all use the same actual DAC configuration and output voltage.

I've seen this claim on other forums and Discord servers. There's never any data to back it up though.

Linearity leaves a bit to be desired, but more importantly it looks like they didn't do a full set of measurements both with and without oversampling. If you're not using oversampling, I imagine there might be an audible difference which would explain your preference in blind testing. The...

For me it's just about value, once you have a fully transparent amplifier or DAC. For example, we can get the Hypex NCOREx NCx 500 for under $1k and this is about as good as it gets for power amp performance. It generally performs better than it needs to, but if I were to pay around that much or...

Yup, it's only a valid question for the M1 Series II which uses the same configuration. There's no good answer of course.