Possibly. But for me, my Pacific, which by the way I do like a lot, is one of many sources in my various systems. I still listen to digital media via CDs and SACDs using a conventional CD/SACD player. I think in some intangible way, a CD still sounds more “real” to me than a ripped FLAC bitstream. And I’ve ripped over 6000 CDs and SACDs, so it’s an easy comparison. Streaming sounds very compressed to my ears. It’s like watching Netflix vs 4K Blu ray disc playback. There’s just no comparison between these if you watch on a large screen projector.
Finally there’s vinyl. I have several turntables that I enjoy listening to. The world’s greatest recordings in the 20th century in virtually every genre — classical, country, folk, jazz, popular and rock — were all done on analog tape machines. Despite all their limitations, vinyl playback of analog sourced recordings still sounds more real to me. I’m listening as I’m typing to a great recording of the famous Elgar Cello concerto by the incomparable cellist Jacqueline du Pre, originally released as an EMI SLS vinyl record. Even though the streamed version is 24-bit 192khz, it does not remotely compare to the sound of the original EMI LP.
Long answer, but my reluctance to splurge even more on DACs than I already have is due to what I perceive, rightly or wrongly, as inherent limitations in the PCM digitization process that no DAC seems able to fix. Digital diehards always quote specs that seem ridiculously overblown. Once you understand that digital distorts more and more as the signal gets fainter, you begin to understand why digital mastering of famous analog recordings like du Pre’s incandescent performance simply sucks. No matter the bit rate.
Of course, with modern digital recordings, these caveats don’t apply. I do enjoy listening to new classical recordings on my Pacific. But these don’t compare to the greatest recordings of the analog era. If you want to hear truly fabulous dynamic range classical recordings, it’s hard to beat the 60 year old Mercury Living Presence using three mikes into an analog tube tape machine. These have far greater dynamic range to my ears than all the 24bit 192khz new albums on Qobuz I hear everyday. The new stuff sounds horribly compressed to my ears. No doubt it’s because the new recordings are massively multi miked, fed into some giant equalizer and mixed by a recording engineer to his/her taste. Who knows, maybe an intern on a summer gig did the mixing. The golden age of recordings is over. Now it’s all MP3 streaming and mass market economy of scale.
My biases, I know. If I had to listen to only one source and it was streaming, I’d buy the Horizon in a heartbeat. Money is not the issue. But as it stands, I can’t justify it if I listen to it only in juxtaposition with many other components.
