What makes a DAC so expensive?

And in my experience, when a designer uses high quality parts like these, that means they’ve got a product where they really care about the sound and have carefully manicured it’s performance. I bought my audio Mirror dac because of this reason and have not been disappointed. I’m totally satisfied, but would also love to hear the mojo dac above because the design decisions you can see from the internal shot are things I’ve found to really matter in my own component builds (independent power supplies, solid core silver wire, electrical isolation, quality choke-based smoothing, etc.).

I am lucky to own the best deal on quality/price for dac....Paid 24 dollars new, with a used value around a little more than 100 dollars...

No coming back..... My dac shows no limitations and in the beginning i had the impressions that my dac has limitations, for example lack of details...(Starting Point Systems NOS dac)

What an error i was making !

My audio system was not the culprit of my unsatisfaction at all, his triple embeddings was faulty simply...

Most people evaluate dac or gear on a wrongly embedded system and most of the defects they attribute to the gear most of the times comes from the electrical, mechanical and from the acoustical powerful embedding...

Thats life, who says that it will be simple?

The best quality of a dac consist in his total non-existence to the ears....This is my experience with S.P. S. dac. If you say no, it is retrieving details, i know immediately, especially if your system is rightfully embedded, that your dac is not a good one never mind the price.... :)

"As I've said before, the proliferation of costly high-end DACs is a clever marketing ploy to snare the gullible and unwary who conflate performance with price"
That's closer to the truth , the capitalism  comment comes in second

Capitalism, marketing,  playing on the notion if it costs more and looks prettier it must be better. Toss all that sciencey word salad in there and you have a 5 figure DAC. Very few if any could pick a $700 DAC from a $10000 DAC in a blind listening test. 

So in your tidy, small audio world a robust power supply made with amorphous core chokes, Mundorf 4 pole caps, high performance diodes, resistors and the like will not set the stage for much better sound? In addition, a dac’s power supply made with a half palm full of $.25 cent throw away parts is all that is required for equally great sound in all dacs.

I know it may be nice for you to shrink down the world of possibilities to something your mind can be comfortable with, but is this really true for the rest of us or at all? This is strangely akin to audio communism. In one blanket statement you have made it clear that only your perception and audio world view have merit and the rest of us are weak in need of your special authority.

Why do you spend anytime here? Really? This is a site for audio enthusiasts with a passion for what is possible and the ability to enjoy these possibilities. You deny the possibilities and darken the spirit of this site. Is it time for you to move on?