Hello peoples
About a year ago I called AKM semiconductor to ask some tolerance questions about some ADC's. After about 20mins of broken english and jumping from person to person, I finally got around to talking to one of their lead engineers. He was very very helpfull with my voltage questions regarding one of their chips, but then we went on to talk about some other companies that use their chips.
To make a long story short, he said that out of all the companies they deal with, Apogee are the only ones that actually "tweak" the D/A converters after they are sent to them. I said "what do you mean tweak"? He said that they "actually open them up and make some minor design changes".
So I am wondering, Does this mean that when you are listening to a signal through the DAC of an Apogee device, you aren't really hearing whats on the hard drive? Cause this seems a little suspicious to me. I was talking to Bob Katz a few years ago and he said that, and I quote, "Apogee converters are colored". Now im thinking their AD is not , but their DA is..
This seems a little sleezy to me,, kinda like the studio/band scenerio where the singer says "man it sounded great in the studio, but it sucks in every cd player I put it in". Because if you tweak the DA, just to give you the illusion that the unit is better than what it is,, aren't you kinda throwing off the mixing process?? DAC's seem like an area where you want the "truth to be told"...
Just my paranoid suspicious 2 cents.