Well, there is a pyramid of sound quality effects: Sound transducer (and room if applicable), ampliifer (incl. its power conditioning sometimes), DAC or source.

Well, there is a pyramid of sound quality effects: Sound transducer (and room if applicable), ampliifer (incl. its power conditioning sometimes), DAC or source. The standard HiFi stance is that source should have no effect on DAC and vice versa, but some weird or old hardware does not do it right. Likewise DAC and amplifier shouldn't affect each other. Amplifier and transducer is a bit more complex due to analog electronics involved. Of course the source can be garbage too (e.g. bad resampling or compression), but reasonable sources are all the same if digital. Except when we're talking vinyl or something, where there's another transducer and amplifier involved.