When Will the DAC Singularity Be Reached?

@jasonbourne71

"This is all that can be heard! So all DAC’s of comparable measurements will sound alike. " Wrong forum and very silly comment. Even the minion master does not claim this, (or so he says.)

DACs are the bane of digital.  Once you smash the music up into billions of tiny pieces, no-one can put it together accurately.  Dither and clock error cannot be eliminated.

This is why people spend big bucks on 'better' DACs.  But the pieces still won't fit exactly.

I believe this is true :

I believe that DAC singularity point has been reached already.

I believe this not because i had much experience with high end dac or dac in general...

i believe it because i listen classical music and non amplified music and the timbre experience, the holographic 3_d soundfield i experience now with a low cost dac prove to me that Dac technology is mature... i dont partake ASR opinions about Dac... but they are not completely wrong either about dac... Amplifier is another matter...

i tuned my room then i learned what are the main acoustic concepts and factors and i am able to sense them if they are lacking...

For sure a low cost dac so good it can be will not rival a high end one ... upgrade is always there as possibility... But the basic situation with dac is not the same as 20 years ago at all...

Then there is a difference bettween dacs levels but what matter now is more the amplification stage or speakers or headphone qualities...My headphone now is a TOP one... I hear every recordings difference with details... My K340 goes under 30 hertz.. It gives me more than most speakers... Anyway in classical recording it sound as speakers filling a room and the soundfield is OUT OF MY HEAD , it depend of the recording process, but is not on a plane curved in my head ... Then if my low cost dac was bad in timbre presentation and in localization or in dynamic or transients , i will hear it... it is not...it does not sound artificial... Analytic yes but with no fatiguing digital glare as i experienced in the past ...My dac is so good , it does not exist for my ears...I did not even imagine to invest in a "better" dac...there is better dac but there is also a S.Q. /price ratio scale...

is it possible to upgrade it ? Yes but the diminushing return treshold for dac is there rather soon than late in a way no other components compared...

For sure on a 50,000 bucks system well done in a dedicated acoustic room my low cost dac will present more limitations than a 5,000 bucks dac... But not so much as to be called "trash"....Sorry it is not trash...I paid it 200 bucks...

Anyway for me conventional dac are now overpassed and made obsolete in a way, by "virtual room" technology created by Dr, Choueri BACCH filters... A genius physicist who work as hobby in acoustic design .. Here we reach with his dac without any degradation of timbre ( the reason for that is in the acoustical physics behind his patented filters) experience perfect localization in a room , for any speakers or any headphone... Why did i would buy a 5,000 conventional dac without the BACCH patented filters ? A better color on my timbre ? I dont need that even now...

Conventional dac are obsolete... People dont know it yet...😊

I concur with what it is said here :

 

 

I used to be on the equipment ferris wheel, going around and around and around. Maybe equipment roulette is more fitting? This DAC, that DAC, this cartridge, that cartridge, amps, etc. Never quite happy. Once I learned all the nuances of speakers in a room, got appropriate speakers, subs, and fixed my room, then I finally got off the equipment merry go round. All those changes I thought I was making, that never seemed to quite do it, were not doing anything. I have easily spend over $20K on DACs over the last decade. Now every DAC in my main system sounds good.

Maybe I am the man out in this discussion, but I would rather be happy and confident in my system than yearn for yet another lateral change. One spot I do agree with @melm is that good headphones are more revealing than speakers.

Because of my journey, like the op, I question the value of expensive DACs. They may be different but different is not better, it is different. Maybe that works for you, maybe it does not. It is working for some people here, but I wonder what are they putting a bandaid over.

 

 

 

 

 

You've been reading too much ASR.  Cheap DACs are not outperforming high end DACs.  

Well, some of them are in the ASR tests.  Where can I see an alternate set of objective measurements that shows they aren't?  Or even a well-managed set of subjective comparisons that shows they aren't?  By well-managed, I mean all other components are kept the same; volume levels are matched;  results are repeatable (that is, the same judgement is reached by multiple listeners for multiple music samples).