Does an expensive DAC make a difference?

Q: Does an expensive DAC make a difference?

A: Most sigma delta DAC chips sound so similar it is hard to tell them apart. The sound the DAC puts out is also influenced by the analog circuitry, which may or may not be significant. Since many DACs try to be "transparent", i.e/ to add or take away nothing from the signal, you are not going to see a huge difference between them, despite their cost. So for example an ODAC sounds very similar to a Benchmark DAC1.

There are 3 exceptions:

1) some manufacturers go our of their way to "tune" the sound of their dac, typically by using the analog circuit to modify the sound, for example the warm sound of the Cambridge Audio DACMagic 100 or the Micromega MyDAC.

2) An NOS DAC often sounds very different than regular sigma delta DACs, mainly because the DAC chip itself i very different.

3) Some DACs add a filter to the output stage to modify the sound. This filter can be a tube, for example the Aune T1. The tube does not really act as a tube (i.e. for amplification) but serves to distort the signal in a pleasing way. Therefore these DACs sound different.

So it's not the price of the DAC per se, but which category it falls under that ultimately determines the sound it generates.

In general headphones and amps make much more different to sound than DACs. But DACs make a bigger difference than cables.