yep, that rule for high-grade is also mine... although i have still very good hearing (and a slight tinnitus at night but unless i focus on it, i can ignore it ) i can hear most frequencies of a hearing test, i did shoot a lot during my full year army time (Sig SG550, M2 Browning and Panzerfaust) exercises but i was always wearing ear plug (sometime combined to noise isolation over-ear)
for DAC chip in example, i had various AKM (mid and high ) in my DAP and DAC-AMP and then i took the KA1 for my phone with an ESS Sabre (well my Pentium III era PCs always had a ESS Solo-1 chip
)
and i tested some Burr-Brown, Cirrus Logic and Wolfson, to rank them, the signature that fit me most would be Cirrus Logic chips most of the time, but i do like the ESS a bit more than the AKM (hence why Fiio lineup after AKM factory fire, like the E10K-TC and New K3 are fine)
and did quite like the Burr-Brown equiped Naim DAC-V1 (expensive? that one is 1999chf luckily it was not mine...) thus why that iFi Micro iDSD Signature review interested me ....
headphone too, the FHs, i can hear details i could not with a good pair of "non hi-res cert.", i always do live test and i also returned or sold to friend various models that did not fit me
as for reviews,
@VSG is probably the only reviewer who's almost spot on with my own experience (let say about 85% )
599$ for the iFi Micro iDSD Signature is cheap in the end compared to the Naim DAC-V1
maybe i can stretch my budget up to 350chf (which would put some good desktop DAC in range
)