Article: Chord Electronics Qutest DAC Review

[Superdad]

2 hours ago, barrows said:

Even the very best SMPS (and these are much bigger than any wall wart) still have orders of magnitude higher noise than the best linear supplies. 

 

As well as oodles of common-mode AC leakage--which will sail right through the entire DAC.  So even if the local regulators (and battery systems in the case of some of the Chord units) on the DAC board take care of the less-than-stellar DC noise performance of an SMPS, there is still that pernicious AC leakage--which is happy to travel over all sorts of DC connections, digital and analog.