Simply doing a "sighted" listening comparison doesn't really mean much. I'm glad you think you can hear the difference, but that's an opinion- not science. And really, you'd need to have a number of people do the blind listening test in order to get some meaningful data about how readily people can hear the difference- one person doing a blind test only tells us that he can hear the difference - not if the difference is readily hearible by listeners generally.
I know exactly that. This is why i wrote specifically the details of the comparison. I sent this DAC to Amirm to confirm my thoughts and you read the review.
Lucky me i was right this time.
Sometimes it is obvious, just like adding a subwoofer to a pair of speakers that are very weak in low frequencies. The bass line just pop out the dark etc etc. Dammit i was not comparing two cables here. ( i am not saying that cables make a difference, they usually don't, in video i've witnessed differences, especially with long length but this is a different topic)
I am all for the science, like most of the readers here i imagine.
But i am not equipped with the tools to measure anything and just did not feel like asking my neighbors to come test review my DAC's.
So take my feeling for what it is. An educated feeling for whatever it can mean here. This is not scientific and i know it. I never claimed otherwise.
I use to work for a very high end audiotorium and I spent hours comparing products, blind, on the same track. I am probably not the average Joe in term of experience. But i perfectly understand that this is subjective.