How easily can you distinguish between different DACs?

+1, @verdantaudio on how to evaluate gear. 

IMHO @duckworp comparison between $1500 and $25000 DAC’s is deeply flawed. How does one expect to hear differences between the two DAC’s with a sub $500 streamer. IME, the source (streamer) is just as important as DAC in the signal chain. One wouldn’t install a $12K streamer ahead of $1500 DAC and vice versa. Both of these components are equally important if you truly want to exploit a high resolution DAC or Streamer. It’s a balancing act, once you achieve this balance; you are in for a royal treat. 

@mapman 

I believe you missed my point…you can buy a streamer / DAC for few hundred dollars nowadays and be completely happy with the result. The point I was trying to make, if you are going to go through the trouble of comparing two DAC at extreme ends (atleast in dollar value), use a better streamer to exploit its full potential. A $500 streamer is a definite bottle neck for a $25K DAC. Now if you believe spending beyond $500 on a streamer is waste of money then by all means one can conclude a $25K DAC is a bad value cause you never going to hear differences that can justify spending $25K especially when paired with a $500 streamer or if your entire system is around $30K…It’s all relative! 

+1, @ghdprentice on implementation. I’ve heard some of the perfectly measured DAC’s and they choke the life out of music. 

It’s about quenching your listener satisfaction and it’s about self-control you only live once. 

@mhwilliford

Congratulations and good call on improving the source by switching to N200. Now if you bring a high quality DAC, you should be able to appreciate the nuances (or not) over your integrated DA2. I also like your approach of long term listening before forming any conclusions.

I believe the main issue with DAC costing 2x, 3x or 4x times is not whether they sound better or not. It’s the added cost that doesn’t quite commensurate with the perceivable differences in SQ. Most folks are quite content with a $1500 DAC that gets them close to 80-85% performance of a DAC’s costing, say $5K.

“When you stop hearing a difference, stop spending money and enjoy the music.”
+1, @tonywinga