I’ll be the detractor (as usual) and suggest your problem is not going to be solved by the DAC. Of dozens of DACs, only once have I found that one produces slightly more forward voices than the other (Pro-Ject DAC Box SFL vs any Delta Sigma DAC). Expense of the DAC makes no difference either. The major determinant of whether you’ll like a DAC is how your system sounds at whatever particular volume you happen to be playing at. Louder, even by fractions of a dB, almost always sounds better. So unless you are painstakingly level-matching the volume when making such comparisons, chances are your subconscious confirmation bias is going to pick the DAC you most recently purchased, or the DAC playing louder. The only real caveat to this is if you go with a super old-school design with high jitter and distortion, such as the aforementioned Pro-Ject DAC. That DAC does indeed have a unique flavor, but probably because it is effectively a “broken” design. It sounds warm though, bass heavy, and with slightly recessed vocals. Modern R2R DACs sound nearly identical to Delta Sigma DACs once you level match the outputs with a quality dB meter.
It is far more likely that the culprit is the speakers, how your speakers are placed, or your room acoustics. I would start by adjusting speaker toe-in, and/or adjusting distance from the wall behind them. You also might try putting an absorption panel on the wall, centered between the speakers. If you use a tube amp, that’s another potential culprit. Many tube amps emphasize the midrange freqs, especially with reactive speaker loads .
I get why listeners tend to identify DACs, sources and cables as their problem (I did too once upon a time), because it’s much easier to swap out a source or cable than it is to mess around with speaker placement/replacement, room acoustics, or replacing our heavy amplifiers. Our inherent nature is to choose the easier solution to problems, especially when the actual problem is uncertain.
