Glissando

Thats because critical listening is actually quite hard work. Requires a great deal of concentration and repitition over what can be quite long periods.

Yes but for it be valid ideally listeners need to be "trained" and educated what they should be listening for. Its not just putting your favourite tracks on and giving it a casual listen, wooo thats sounds nice Its listening critically for cetrain attributes. Its also likely to vary a little depending on what you are evaluating, speakers, amplifier, DAC etc. Harman International, and others have evaluation lists and training kits if you are interested. It actually takes a lot of planning and time to conduct a proper double blind test http://harmanhowtolisten.blogspot.com/2011/01/welcome-to-how-to-listen.html https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/critical-listening-for-studio-production

Modest to I see as well So why only measurements an no bl**dy listening!

But its in a completely different format! Not readable or listenable until AFTER conversion so you are not able to compare like for like. So how do you measure the input and compare it with the reconstituted analogue then? Please dont claim its the output of the DAC as thats just

Sorry but I dont accept your argument that the measurements of just electronic distortion and frequecy resonse of a DAC at the outputs represent the whole story of how a DAC is handling the D/A conversion and reproducing the signal. Thats too coarse a level view of whats happening in that process.

But its NOT a distortion issue as such but one of time the clue is in that a Transient very fast rising signal. Its said the 16 bit CD time resolution is 22 micro seconds but the brain resolves @ 4 micro seconds. So if that is out of kilter then thats why we percieve the difference.

Thats completely illogical You have no reference starting point for comparison as the imput is 0's and 1's its only back to analogue once the DAC has reconstituted it so how do we know how accurate the conversion was?

But the transients are only being reproduced by the speakers from those reconstituted by the DAC into the analogue signal. If this is not accurate then its impossible for them to be reproduced accurately no matter how good the speakers may be.

Sorry but I disagree transparency is not the same thing is accuracy Transparency is the quality of being easy to see through - lacking color and distortion. A transparent component or system, adds little or no identifiable signature to the sound of its own Accuracy The fact of being correct and without any mistakes Remember the digital signal has been processed and converted several times so its possible for errors to creep into that process. The analogue signal is sampled at strategic points and the DAC has to try and reconstruct that as the original by calculating how those sampling points should be joined up to reconstitute the original. So how accurate that process is will profoundly impact what we hear. As they say garbage in garbage out.

Yes he's is just like politicians never answers the question asked, give the answer they want by side stepping by making another related point. But hey ho at least better the devil we know

No need to bring sex and religion into it

Yes I think its something we have to accept as what we are listening to is a reproduction thats been processed not the original. I was in a music instrument shop during the summer when lockdown was released. Not being able to attend any live music events for months a chap was playing one of the pianos and it was startling at first the immediacy, tone and harmonics reminded me what in comparison I listen to at home.

Yes I think research into psychoacoustics is influencing what we come to consider accurate conversion of an alalogue signal to digital and back again in terms of accuracy to the original.