The sound quality from DACs - is it all the same?

“ … Do DACs make a difference? - I Bought a $10,000 DAC…”

I have owned several different Dacs with different setups, but I often wonder about the question at least at a theoretical level. I currently have Holo May Kte which is very good sounding Dac. It is non over sampled R2R DAC which also has impressive measurements. I can definitely hear sound quality differences between DACs. However, these differences may not come off as obvious, meaning if you play a song with those DACs, you’d still hear that same song. If the music is very well recorded, it would be more challenging to decern any differences. However, DAC that sounds good to my ears has little or no listening fatigue so that I can listen to it for hours. I had Chord Hugo 2 and Mojo 1 & 2 previously. Imo, Rob Watts designs some fantastic dacs and these chord dacs produced really good PRAT. But, there were some unnatural characteristics with the sound that made me to stop listening after an hour or so. After Chord dacs, I had Moon 390 DAC / streaming preamp. It was an all in one unit that performed well, I thought. It had tad less detail than Hugo 2 but it definitely threw a bigger stage and deeper depth. The Moon sounded more natural to me so I had much onger listening sessions. Once I got May DAC, I could tell how inferior the sound of Moon was. From naturalness, tone / timber, and imaging perspective, the Moon DAC could not match.

Having said all that, I think about a perfectly converted analog signal which is in an absolute form. Any deviation from the perfect signal is an imperfect one. Knowing this, and DACs have compromises in their design and implementation, so I expect some variations of sound differences. However, these differences can narrow as they get closer to that perfect signal.

I have had a number of DACs in my system over the last few years: Cambridge Audio DacMagic 100, Cambridge Audio CXN V2, Ayre EX8 (with the digital card), Chord Dave.  There is definitely a difference: e.g., compared to the CXN V2, the Chord Dave has a lot more texture in its bass, better soundstage/separation of instruments, and wonderful detail and air in the higher frequencies.  These are smaller differences in comparison to e.g., moving from a $1000 pair of speakers to a $14000 pair or a similar upgrade in integrated amplifiers. I would upgrade DACs beyond $1000 once you have already reached a high level for Speakers (I find significant improvements at least till the $10K level) and Amplifiers (I find significant improvements at least till the $6K level).