I'm thinking of Betteridge's Law of Headline's : "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
Well, I happen to think it can, but i dislike confronting statements - tends to set the tone for an argumentative thread.
The interview is pretty interesting and they are certainly correct about the importance of power supplies with digital. I have yet to hear one of these systems in person, but my impression is that they do midrange really well for acoustic music, but bass, treble, and speed, not so well.
I have listened to Audio Note systems many times at shows, and they tend to do some things extremely well, but have never totally convinced me. I suspect it is their speakers, but can't be sure. Some individual components, I am told (by my friend who has reviewed them for Hifi-Critic), such as their top phono stage and this top level cd player, are the best they have heard.
I remember 20 years ago I was really excited about how good SACDs sounded and my friend would reply "Actually I read that Red Book CDs can sound just as good or better!" When I heard Red Book in his system, it did not sound good or noteworthy. My sense has always been some people have a psychological attachment to the format that they invested in, even if it really isn't fantastic. Granted, the quality of the recording is always most important, and the DAC makes probably as much or more impact than the recording format.
Interestingly, SACDs have always left me emotionally detached from the music, whilst Redbook, with all its perceived weaknesses, kept me engaged. I have found the quality of the transport to be equally, or more, important as the DAC.
I also remember all the discussions about why the earliest CDs sounded so bad. Maybe the converters were garbage and had phase distortion, the mastering engineers still thought they were working with vinyl, second generation tapes were used, etc. The big advantage of that era is the massive amount of dynamic range that was preserved and the lack of digital limiters.
I stayed with vinyl until 1991. My first CD player (an Arcam Alpha) sounded ordinary and I went through many player upgrades through the years. I also bought into the remaster craze and replaced most of my earlier CDs. By 2003 I had way more "resolution", but something was wrong. You know how you impress people with the sound of your system, but you don't spend hours listening to it yourself?
The turning point for me was the release of a remaster of one of my favorite albums - Al Stewart's Year of the Cat. I had loved listening to it on vinyl, and my 1991 CD did not have the same magic, sounding digital, metallic, thin and bright. I bought the remaster in the expectation that it would be closer to the vinyl, only to find the opposite. This lead me into exploring the whole concept that the remasters were an improvement over earlier releases. It also lead me to discover that much of my favorite music had been released on CD very early on. Not all early release CDs sound great, many suck, but the good ones are in a different realm to later CDs.
As an example, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon was released on CD in 1983 by EMI/Toshiba for Japan, and (same mastering) by EMI/Harvest in 1984 for USA/Europe. In 1986 there was an announcement in the press about the re-release of the album, because they had not used the master tapes on the first issue. I can tell you with assurance that the first issue CD craps all over all later reissues!
After years working in the audio industry I found very few instances where 16/44.1 sounded better than the same source converted to 24 bit or DSD. The instances where it sounded better were with DACs that were noisy/measured poorly and benefited from not having as much dynamic range to deal with. Perhaps that is true for Audio Note.
A friend of mine, who worked as a mastering engineer for Sony, used to like saying 24bit CDs are 16 bits with 8 extra bits of marketing. People love numbers.
I definitely respect the lengths they are willing to go to get away from "digital" sound. I used to think DSD was the best way to go, but some DSD converters are also very clinical, and maybe there are other ways. I also suspect that the route Audio Note goes in order to constitute digital sources in an analog flavor alters the sound significantly with distortions. People are willing to pay massive cash for their systems, so they must sound really good, at least for some tastes.
My friend who reviews for HiFi-Critic tells me that the Audio Note player is something special
HiFi-Critic review