[SteveCallas]

First off, no worries, I don't take it as criticism - this is good discussion.

Ok, now I understand what you are saying. While it definitely makes sense, and would help to get closer to scientifically determining for certain whether audible differences can be detected by one person, I think it falls slighty out of the scope of our test. Rereading our goal, I guess we should have worded it a bit differently to "Our goal was to determine whether or not the different DACs and analog prestages of different receivers and pre/pros can affect percieved sound quality in a typical listening evironment under normal listening conditions", or something to that effect. The testing methods were structured to make any differences that may exist as a result of the DACs and analog prestage more easily noticed then under normal listening conditions to basically error on the side of wanting to make sure we would hear the differences if we could. The test results would likely influence my own purchasing decision, and I didn't want to take any chances of denying myself of any potential sound quality benefits.

So basically, Jon and I were doing it more for our own sake and curiousity then to try and establish a scientific fact which can be applied to any and all circumstances. Kinda touched on with "We aren’t trying to pass off our test as a given fact in every single circumstance for every single person, but our results are fact in this listening room with this equipment with these people". If we wanted to go further, or even just know for certain whether differences truly exist, we would have just run the analog preouts into a computer and recorded the same clip played back through the different units, then examined the results.