I agree with the premise. If they are level matched they should sound the same. In my case or philosophy I would much rather leave the source format as is, which means leave the ISO as is and convert on the fly if necessary. Do you notice a difference in gain between say playing an SACD directly versus playing back the converted PCM files. In my setup I notice about an 8 dB difference. Are you compensating for some of this by applying gain in the conversion process ?
Yes, as needed. Depending on the SACD mastering choices, peak of DSD may be as much as -6dbFS in PCM (SACD spec recommends 6dB of headroom in DSD mastering so that if converted to PCM it's unlikely to overload. That's quite conservative so often the level of the PCM version can be increased several dB without overload). So when I use Foobar2Ks SACD plugin to convert to PCM, I start at +6 gain, and watch the conversion process proceed track by track using F2Ks console window , and if there's an overload I stop and restart conversion at +5. Repeat as needed, lowering the gain by 1dB, until there are no overloads during conversion. ('Thriller' appears not to meet spec; it overload briefly on some tracks even when there is 0dB gain increase during PCM conversion)
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