I myself have listened to many different dacs and all of them have about the same specs but the expensive ones tend to sound clearer with less distortion. Is there some other way to measure a dac quality other than price?
I myself have listened to many different dacs and all of them have about the same specs but the expensive ones tend to sound clearer with less distortion. Is there some other way to measure a dac quality other than price?
Sound quality reproduction is very subjective. Additionally one must consider the gear used in your system as it is important they have synergy between them. Just as important, some believe even more important, is room treatment. A poorly arranged/setup room will make even the most expensive high quality gear seem lackluster even boring. With that said, here are the DACs/network streamers I owned. All also can be used as preamps.
NAD C658 - good all around device
Auralic Altair G2.1 - Overall much better than the NAD
Ayre QX-8 - Better than the Auralic but not the same quality gap as between the NAD and Auralic.
Aurender A20 - This one is on a whole other level than the Ayre. As is to be expected.
I have found no matter the gear, once you get above the $10K cost point per device the quality of sound reproduction is audibly better.
My opinion
Well I’m not gonna spend that amount of money on audio gear but yeah if speaker quality and ESPECIALLY the room are MUCH more important, the dac is just the cherry on top. My living room is quite big with tall ciellings (made of concrete and bricks), when I needed to change the furniture the room was really empty, that made the music sound echoy and harsh. It’s facinating what little things like that make to the experience!