this is a subjective field… some people actually like to degrade/crunch/lo-fi a signal… other like to keep things Hi-def/pristine… but to answer you’re question, yes the MD & OT have very different characters, first of all the sampling format itself: MDUW is 12-bit mono, OT is 24-bit stereo (that’s double the resolution!) but i’d be ready to bet the converters & signal path is probably quite different as well since almost a decade separates both units… as for my personal opinion, OT does sound kind of flat whereas MD has very specific dynamics, hard to put into words though…