How easily can you distinguish between different DACs?

@audiowebe  Yes - the N200 made an audible difference, a little cleaner, a little more solid.  Particular improvement in Hi-Res (with regard to sampling rate) content for some reason. I also noticed a big jump in the playback quality of my ripped CDs - best I have ever heard them, and I did own the last of the top-end OPPO players.  The minor downside to the Aurender for me has been the UI.  It is not as feature rich as Roon and does not offer a PC-based platform.  That said, the UI (Conductor) is super-reliable and supported by real people who actually respond to your questions promptly - you are never lost in a crowd-sourced feedback morass.  There is talk of Aurender being a Roon endpoint soon, but I do not know how much of the Aurender sound quality advantage will be lost by operating in that mode.  Sorry - I went off for a while there. 

I've owned the following DACs - Audio Note 1,1, Blue Circle 509, April Music Stello MK2, Aqua LaVoce S3, Modwright Elysee, and MojoAudio Mystique V3, none sound the same,  and it was easily discernible 

One more point to add about the Aurender N200 as a source and what it brings to the table (I assume most mid-high and above server streamers would do the same to a similar extent).  In my response above I said "a little cleaner, a little more solid" and I'd forgotten about the subtle but very satisfying sound layer reveals that have come with the N200 replacing my PC running Roon.  A good example is the Local Hero Soundtrack (Mark Knopfler).  The very first track - The Rocks and the Water - used to be somewhat of a throwaway for me - but with the Aurender the sonic subtleties coming from the various blended synth effects is like listening to the quiet in nature - at first you hear nothing, then the sounds build in and around each other.  This is an extreme example - I am not trying to say it makes all music sound stupendous - but it certainly reveals subtleties in a very pleasing way.

@arafiq

Really? You think that’s the only thing setting a Ferrari and Corolla apart?

No, and you are emphasizing my point for me very well. There are huge and easily measurable differences between a Ferrari and Corolla. Nobody would confuse them even if they were blindfolded, riding as a passenger. The Ferrari accelerates faster, corners better, and sounds and feels and smells different in easily distinguishable ways that are very well known to be within the bounds of what humans can detect. When you get a dac that’s the equivalent of a Ferrari in terms of price and status, and compare it to a dac that’s equivalent to a Corolla, that’s where you find that there’s nowhere near the same difference. The cheap dac does everything as well as the expensive dac in any way you can measure. Often better. If you blindfold someone and have them listen to two different dacs, unless one of them is intentionally non-linear in its response, and the volume level isn’t matched, it’s going to be super tough for anyone to tell them apart. Maybe some people can, but it’s nowhere near the kind of difference you get between a Ferrari and a Corolla. It’d be more like spending 10 times as much upgrading a Ferrari to slightly increase the acceleration and braking so that you can complete a 5 mile curvy course on average 1 second faster. That might be a meaningful difference to a few very savvy drivers.

All dacs are Ferraris these days, except perhaps for some very cheap or expensive stuff that's poorly designed and implemented.

In terms of systems that are "resolving" or "revealing," those terms are not clearly defined. I can make a highly revealing system by making it ultra unstable, or accentuating its response at certain frequencies. Such a system will reveal differences in connected equipment because such a system is way out of spec. It only reveals how well some components can cope with or synergize with its oddities.

@asctim - Which "Ferrari" & "Corolla" DACs have you directly compared?