More money toward better speakers or a better DAC?

There aren’t too many universal truths in this hobby as everyone hears differently and values different things, but two things I’ve found to be pretty universal are 1) everything matters and 2) the audio chain is only as strong as the weakest link.  Focusing on one area at the significant expense of another is not a strategy for building an optimal system IMHO. 

It is not always a case of drop a better component into your system and get better sound. The sound you achieve is a result of how all your components and your room play together. 

Unless you have an old DAC, it is likely that moving your speakers a few inches will give you a bigger overall change in your sound. 

But if you have already optimized your speaker positioning and like the overall sound... then trying a different DAC may be worthwhile.  Spending $3k doesn’t guarantee better sound than spending $1k... it’s what works/sounds best to you in your room with your other components. 

TUBADOUR III Non Oversampling Tube DAC,  interesting.

not sure what non oversampling dac means and what is special about a tube dac, unless it helps with treble/vocal sounds similar to a tube amp,

You can get an insight to NOS here. I have no idea what a tube does in a DAC other than add distortion.


http://archimago.blogspot.com/2018/11/nos-vs-digital-filtering-dacs-exploring.html

A low cost DAC these days ($1500 - $3000) is of incredible quality. Even reviewers of $15K+ DACs are saying this in their reviews, such as in a Bartok DAC review I just read (and others such as Jeff Fritz of SoundstageUltra.com).

If you have speakers that are pretty good and you generally like them I would spend my money on room treatments and/or Digital Room Correction. If you are a ROON or JRiver user then DRC is available to you.

I have KEF LS50s in a bad room. I will update these very soon but before I did that I got room treatments from GIK Acoustics and the LS50’s sounded amazing afterwards.

When I get my larger speakers into this bad room I will get Acoustic Sounds in Canada to remotely work with me to create DRC Convolution file(s) that I will plug into my ROON server. This will tailor my sound curve in the bass region to fit my room. It will be digital room treatments on steroids. The GIK treatments and the DRC will have the biggest impact vs more expensive DACs.