@Mike Hanson - thanks for an interesting thread. Given the amount of patronising, rudeness, bad science and the like that any Objective/ Subjective debate apparently brings, it is pleasing to see a civilised conversation too.
I am not good at auditioning kit and describing what I hear. I have learned that it can take ages to work out what I am hearing. As a result, I have often asked musician friends to help review kit, having become confident that what they think after 3 tracks is usually what I find I think after considerably longer, even if I was definitely not agreeing at the time. Their ears may be just as bad as mine by now, but listening critically is a skill, and one that musicians are effectively trained for, while most music fans (like me) just want the experience.
"Fidelity to what?" also matters. With acoustic music from a few musicians, it may be that the 'real' experience really does sound as if they were in my living room. On the other hand, I just played Carmina Burana & The Rite Of Spring - listening to them live means (among other things) a very wide and vague stereo image. I also heard the surviving Rolling Stones at Twickenham fairly recently - it was great fun, and a good deal better than they were 30 years ago IMHO, but you wouldn't call it high fidelity to anything.
Given all that, I am surprised by how much high fidelity actually matters to me. I play more classical music now that I did 35-40 years ago, and more jazz. The obvious explanation is that tastes change, but I enjoyed live classical & jazz music even 40 years ago.
The change came from hi-fi, I think. The kit I had in 1985/90 worked pretty well for Bowie, Dylan, Cohen, Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones, but Stravinsky was chaos. Classical musician friends could listen on my RP3/ Creek 4040/ Heybrooks and hear what was going on whatever was being played, but I couldn't. Jump forward to my current kit, and it is all a bit easier, even for the cloth-eared.
The wider curiosity here is why fidelity matters so much to me, if I am not a great listener and want the most enjoyable experience rather than the delivery that is closest to the original sound for its own sake. My conclusion is that it I need all the help I can get in getting from the music as much as possible, and sooner or later good fidelity is needed for that.
Thus, I might be transfixed by the voice of Joan Baez/ Nina Simone/ Maria Callas on Linn Kans or ESL 63s, but the things they really don't do well in hi-fi terms will interfere with my enjoyment of lots of other music sooner or later. Similarly, I liked the sound of LP12s in the 1980s and agree that upgrades to bearing, chassis and power mean that it has less of that sound - but that lets through more of the music without removing the emotive core of why some of us want to play LPs even now.
I have also noticed that some imperfections are easier to spot without being more important than others. Thus, lack of bass below 50Hz, narrow stereo image or exaggerated mid-range are easy to spot, while just taking enough edge off that subtle timing information fails to reach your tapping foot is harder to spot. The fact that I own a pile of Naim boxes may be a hint as to which I think matters most to my own enjoyment of music.
You may be a good deal more skilled as a critical listener, but your DAC dilemma thus rings bells with me. If prolonged listening to a wide range of music shows that the Denafrips continues to be more enjoyable, I reckon guilt will fade and you won't use anything else - your living room is not a recording studio. However, if the exaggerations starts to wear and the Benchmark start to be a welcome relief, then that too is an answer.
If you don't yet have a definitive answer to that, then I am with all those here suggesting you keep both and play them a bit more. Do let us know which box you are using in 2-3 months!
