The most impactful for noticing the difference? Again, I would argue it's the trained ear. If you have plenty of mixing experience then all these details add up, and a treated room becomes the most critical - agree with that.
Other than the top engineers in the industry. This is a discussion that always ends up in the "double-blind study" vs actual real engineers working in the industry.
The DAC is pretty impactful if it's outright incapable of outputting anything beyond the usual 48kHz :)
Even the cheapest consumer DACs oversample into the megahertz range.
The most impactful for noticing the difference? Again, I would argue it's the trained ear. If you have plenty of mixing experience then all these details add up, and a treated room becomes the most critical - agree with that.
So far, here isn't sufficient evidence that anyone has such reliably golden ears.
Other than the top engineers in the industry. This is a discussion that always ends up in the "double-blind study" vs actual real engineers working in the industry.