I should be careful. I haven’t seen the DS Mk I and DS Mk II measured side by side with the same measuring setup and tests. All I really know is that we dropped the noise floor of the already great sounding MK II by 20dB in the tests we’ve performed so far and that before taking out the attenuators it already sounded much blacker than the DS. It’s certainly the case that the attenuators (as implemented) weren’t our friends. And it makes it clear that they aren’t needed to get a great sound.
Getting that extra 20dB also gives me some direction for improving the software down the road - so it will only get better.