Of course different DACs can sound different. But if you’re limiting your experience to, for instance, just comparing one AKM DAC versus another AKM DAC, then no, there’s no humanly perceptible difference to be perceived.

There’s a whole heap of people out there that need to remember that “I can’t hear a difference” =/= “No one can hear a difference”

For me, the way I am about audio is opposite to the way I am about, say, coffee. To me, all coffee tastes the same. It obviously doesn’t really, there are millions of coffee enthusiasts in the world that are dedicated to training their palates to discern between all sorts of qualities and characteristics of different coffees. Me, though? Pft, I don’t care enough, I just want the hot bean water that makes me buzzy in the morning. I’ve made no attempt to learn how to discern between different coffees, so they all taste the same to me. But clearly that’s a Me issue, not an Everyone Else issue. “I can’t taste a difference” =/= “No one can taste a difference”

And maybe this all stems from unreasonable expectations. There seems to be this idea that going from one audio chain to another can be like, say, spending your whole life seeing in black and white and then flipping a switch and suddenly seeing in full, vibrant color for the first time. Because honestly, that is the kind of hyperbole that enthusiasts commonly use to describe the difference. They use fun language because they’re having fun with their hobby. But in a literal sense, it’s just not like that at all. It’s much more subtle, and being able to detect these things takes experience and training, and some people have an easier time than others acquiring this experience and training. Some people are very enthusiastic about learning how to hear the subtle differences, they enjoy the ear training process. Other people just don’t care enough and they just want to listen to music. Similarly, there are coffee people that can take one sip and tell you where the beans came from, and there are other people that don’t care and just want the caffeine delivery. The enthusiastic hobbyists and the casual enjoyers. And both of those kinds of people are 100% fine. There’s nothing wrong with being either kind of person. But it’s the kind of person that insists everyone else is stupid for enjoying something differently than they do, that’s the boring, agonizing kind of person you never want to be. Don’t be that kind of person. For the love of god, just let people enjoy things.

There are a few things that make a cable influence sound:

1. It’s important to use oxygen-free copper. Crap copper can lead to channel imbalance

2. It’s important that they’re built properly. Well-soldered, gold-plated. Bad electrical connections = bad signal transmission.

3. EMI shielding if needed. If you live near a radio tower, every wire is an antenna and will pick up interference. Similarly, if you live in an apartment building and you have 30 WiFi networks all around you.

Fortunately, none of these things are expensive. You can tick all these boxes in a $10 cable, easy. Everything else is just snake oil or aesthetics.