Originally posted by unHookt
Looked at the manual and the specs are pretty much the same, at least as far as SQ is involved. Frequency range is only 50 Hz to 15 kHz, and THD is a relatively high 5%. I can't imagine the audio quality to be very good...what would the benefit of the Burr Brown DAC be?
Just bragging rights for entry-level audiophiles who have heard the "Burr Brown" claim tossed around. You can get the 24-bit Burr Brown DACs (bare chip) free from Texas Instruments if you tell them you are an electrical engineering student. It's not an expensive component, and in the end, the sound quality depends not only on the DAC processor itself, but the architecture around it.

The Burr Brown in my McIntosh MX-406 is only 20-bit, but I'd put money on its sound quality over any Pioneer/Premier/Carrozzeria unit.

The 24-bit Sigma-Delta DAC in previous generation Eclipse units has produced competition worthy cleanliness, and even an Eclipse CD8443 with 3 year old technology will blow any current Pioneer out of the water in terms of sound quality.

And yet the 20-bit McIntosh is still cleaner than the Eclipse.

Sooo... in other words, it's become a marketing tool. With all due respect to Pioneer, they are my favorite bang for the buck. You won't get cleaner controls and features in their price range from any other stereo manufacturer, in my opinion. And their competition setup (ODR/P9) is unmatched in its price range. You won't get more processing flexibility without spending more than double on an equivalent Alpine setup. But that unit aside, if you aren't chasing the utmost in sound quality, and you are sensitive about your audio budget, you can't go wrong with Pioneer.

And just to be diplomatic about other brands mentioned in this post, Eclipse units sporting the dual-laser are absolutely positively the most skip resistant units on the market, bar none. I used to demo the CD8454 by taking my pocket knife to a CD, and it would still play, whereas the equivalent Alpine unit won't even pick up the track list.

And Alpine has the best iPod support for a relatively high end unit, since a lot of "high end" brands don't believe in MP3 sound quality.

-Ray