What the Best Dac have you heard or owned. How could you tell it was that good.

I have a Ladder Schumann r2r ladder dac I’m very fond of. It has a beautiful wide and deep soundstage, detailed yet never edgy. I bought it used and to me, best bargain in my system.

At this time I own a Berkeley Alpha Reference 2 MQA, Tubadour IV, Black Ice Glass FX Tube DAC, and a Marantz KI Ruby SACD player. Prior to that I have owned a PSA PerfectWave MK II, and a Resolution Audio Quantum.

I'm afraid that this won't be a very satisfactory answer but I can't really say that one DAC is clearly superior to another. You would think that the Berkeley Reference 2 ($20,000) would blow away the Black Ice ($800) but I've compared them several times and to my ears the differences are pretty small. I could easily live with the Black Ice and be happy. The Tubadour IV is very similar to the other two but there is something about the sound that I find relaxing.

To help put this in perspective, I can't hear the difference between interconnects either. I've tried numerous times and I even bought a pair of silver cables from Audioquest because so many people said they had a distinctive sound. I compared them using a control (two very similar sounding DACs) and I could not hear any difference at all between the silver cables and Blue Jeans cables.

People who report dramatic differences in DACs must have way better hearing, or have a much more resolving system than I do.

I haven’t spent a ton of money on DAC’s. So I know there’s really good ones above my price point. But I bought a Black Ice tube DAC at $900. Replaced the power chord with a Pine Tree iso-braid power cable, and the game changer for me was purchasing 2 NOS Amperex Bugle Boys (12ax7) for the output tubes. I’ve got the magic of tubes along with many other superlatives. I’m good for now! 

I have the WYRED4sound 10th anniversary DAC I bought it because one of the reviewers put it up against his VPI turntable with a $5,000 Japanese cartridge and he said the 10th anniversary DAC was every bit as analog, on that review I bought it and I wholeheartedly agree this is the most analog DAC I've had in my system, one of the other reviewers put it up against his$9,000 COS1 DAC and he said the 10th anniversary DAC was better and then he put it up against Bricasti, chord and other more expensive d a c s and he said the 10th anniversary DAC was better, and they also give you a 30-day trial period if you don't like it send it back and get your money back can't beat that, after you hear this one you won't be needing $30,000 DACS.

After years with the built-in DAC in our tube Jolida JD100 CD player and decades with our Quad amp/pre-amp, we bought an Audio Note Cobra tube integrated and started using its DAC with the same Jolida tube player. Light years in difference in detail! We then splurged and purchased an AudioNote CD 3.1x/II player with its built in DAC. Again, light years ahead of the DAC in the Audio Note integrated amp, and got bonuses of tighter bass, specific sound stage placements of instruments, and amazing sound at low volume. We could A/B every stage with our Quad ESL-57s, and the differences were dramatic. We are now set. I can't imagine any better.