Quote Originally Posted by Shovel_Knight View Post
I expect the new DAC to be significantly better than the Boss, by all accounts Allo did a fantastic job with the latter but PCM51xx family was not really designed for audiophile applications. ESS9038 is a much better chip.
I have the original Boss and follow Allo developments quite closely as I believe they are putting out very good products. Am very interested in their Volt+D amp and upcoming 5v smps.

Were cost no option I would be first in line for this new Sabre DAC, but to play devils advocate for a second, I was under the impression that several top DAC designers are of the opinion that the chip has very little bearing on the sound as compared to the implementation.

So, realistically, how much improvement could we expect from this 9038q2m version over PCM51xx ones? Will only true audiophiles notice much difference?