Continuing the discussion from Audirvāna Studio SQ is bad… nevermind I needed a better amp!:
I don’t agree at all. I play only downloaded files, most are high rez. I find AS very transparent. With classical music, my main love, I am in the recording venue, much more so than with 3.5 and other players I’ve tried.
It’s odd that there is so much conflicting opinion about the SQ. It might have to do with system matching and source material. Perhaps some listeners don’t want to hear what their favourite recordings sound like?
I have always found that using nonacoustic recordings such as rock or pop music tells you very level about the transparency and sound quality of a component. I owned a high-end store for many years and designed loudspeakers and it was always the same when customers brought in their music… if you use non classical music or non acoustic music then you get so many different flavours of ice cream… you can then pick a component or software platform according to what you like and what suits your system but in order to evaluate transparency which for me is the ultimate quality of a component (some people call it natural sound) is to use recordings of acoustic instruments such as from Opus 3 or good classical music recordings. Of course other things are important toi, such as texture, harmonic richness etc but I find AS to be the least digital software platform I’ve heard.