How easily can you distinguish between different DACs?

despite my having tried so so many dacs in the last few years, i would say that a decent dac in the $1000-2500 range will quite fully please most folks here with good systems in, say, the $5,000-$25,000 range... yes there are a few bad ones out there (sonically) but most sound quite good and the differences in sound between the good ones can be rather subtle to most... please see my original thread for further comments on specific dacs

i pursued the vast dac trials mostly out of interest (and sheer boredom during the covid shut-in period), and a desire for learning just what the span of sonic performance is among dacs.... in the last few months i have done no new dac trials, and i have left a gustard r26 and a chord qutest plugged in, with my high dollar dacs put aside (msb, weiss etc)... i am just listening to music, not the gear, and i am very very happy enjoying ith either the chord or the r26

i would say among good dacs, the feature set and form factor should drive the choice, once you have decided if you want a dac that is sonically in the sharper vs smoother school of presentation...

i agree, learning to hear differences and assessing sonic qualities is a learned skill, moreso for some than others, but true for all

for some top tier dacs, their sounds can be very very similar -- couple examples in my travels...

i had the bricasti m1 mdx, and the weiss 501 side by side for a month, a-b-ing back and forth, each using their own streaming front ends, both very highly respected and prized dacs... as much as i tried and tried, i simply could not reliably tell the difference ... so in the end i kept one and sold the other based on non-sonic considerations

otoh... i compared a topping d90 mqa to a chord qutest... listening to a single song, i could tell the chord was significantly better... clearer, more musical, more extended, less mechanical in presentation