I have definitely heard improvement from restarting a dac, but this was in cases of very obvious distortion setting in for reasons I don’t understand. I can’t say that I’ve ever noticed more subtle improvements from a restart, but based on the extreme experiences I suspect more subtle problems can set in too.
Actually, come to think of it, in one of the extreme cases the problem was explained to me by the manufacturer as an issue with static charge building up. They recommended unplugging and then plugging the dac back in. It always worked, and needed to be done about once a week. In another case the manufacturer refused to acknowledge the problem, but a person on an internet forum suggested that the power supply they had supplied wasn’t providing adequate current. I got a bigger power supply and that problem went away.
The cases I don't understand involve sources that are not very good, like optical TV out, which has a lot of jitter in it. I know this because some better dacs I tried to feed with that signal wouldn't play at all unless I relaxed the DAC's jitter tolerance. Some of them have a setting for that. I don't understand why it sometimes goes out of whack all at once and sounds highly distorted. But I suspect it has something to do with that jitter.