Most Extensive State-of-the-Art DAC Survey Ever!

Unless you’ve got FU $$$ and are ok with throwing it out the window, spending $30k+ on a DAC that could be matched or surpassed in performance in 5 years by a $2000 DAC is insane to me.  Assuming that timeframe you would’ve spent $6000+ per year to own one of these DACS and then it’s a highly-depreciated audio boat anchor.  No thanks.  A more mature technology like turntables, yeah I can get more behind that, but in this rapidly evolving era of DAC/electronics technological innovations — no thanks. 

“spending $30k+ on a DAC that could be matched or surpassed in performance in 5 years by a $2000 DAC”

@soix

That’s $500 a month of pure joy over the next 5 years, hell I’ll jump all over that than freakin wait 5 years for that $2K DAC. Those who can spend $30k today, don’t give a damn about its depreciated value in five years 🤣

If you are worried about depreciation, buy real estate!  

Owning a custom made tube dac with separate tube regulated power supply, my hearing tastes are in line with Ron's fwiw.

Buy a Topping and a Loki

There a fact to these DAC's no matter how much you spend they can only get so good. Yea there are a lot of details that make one sound good. However the bag is open on the that people that design them all know the same stuff. Ground, Timing, Data recovery, great low noise supplies, a great analog section, flexible butter Worth are Bessel filtering, Up sampling, and correlation or stacking.  Paying to much does not get you any more but a weird name.

Get a Sonic Transporter and a Optical Redu you'll be glad you did.