Do hi-end DACs offer true value or diminishing return...

there is a correlation with the price... do you want to understand it? - a good analogy - drive a cheap Korean or American car ... and then try a BMW 750 Li or a Mercedes S class ...
of course, all components of the path are important - high-quality recording, a special room, good electricity, other devices and their synergy ...
Do you need it? - it will be expensive and long - but you will get an illusion that will bring joy ...

You can also get by with less money and get acceptable sound quality.

You can’t get by with small funds - this is a lie ... start from 10 K

Funny. When you call professionals, and ask about adding more DAC, changing a DAC, etc. … they’ll usually ask the question: “Well, can you REALLY tell the difference?”

And I’ll have to say, “No”

There are just too many variables which have even more opinions. There are no facts. Your ears and your room are the only facts… but they cannot be compared to another’s… same deal. 

My experience with DACs a is that a very well-designed unit can be had for under 2K and the real performance differences come from the choice of power conditioner, cables, isolation and system synergy. Are higher priced units potentially better? I would say that they represent greater potential, which may or may not be realized through the choice of the other components in the system.

Diminishing returns; worse than any other individual component; and so quickly obsolete 

I don't understand trying to make sonic comparisons from a Youtube video, so I didn't bother watching the video.

It's weird, I don't have a single DAC that's "obsolete" and I've had some for quite a while.  I think we've seen DSD and sampling rates and goofy compression algorithms (MQA) go about as far as they can go.  Many DACS (FPGA) can be upgraded if something new does come along.

I have owned many DACs and no two have sounded the same.  If you can't hear the difference, find the cheapest one you can or get the one that ASR says "measures the best".  Lucky you for being able to save some money!

Not that price always equates to sound quality, and of course there are diminishing returns.  A $50K DAC isn't going to sound 10 times better than a $5K DAC.  However, just like most things, if you're trying to eke out that last little bit of performance, it's probably going to be expensive.  

Lastly, don't even get me started on the person who got mad at a dealer because they spent 4 hours of time switching DACs around for their personal listening experiment and charged him for that valuable time.  Good grief! 

If someone wanted me to pay to listen to something they already had set up to demo, that would be one thing.  I would walk out the door though, not hand them my money and cry about it later or "punish" them by not buying anything from them ever.  As if you were going to in the first place.

Some of these threads!