What makes a DAC so expensive?

Noone ever claimed any DAC was 100% transparent. I said audibly transparent. I never claimed transparent is what everyone wanted I was trying to answer specific questions about audible distortion and power supply noise.

"Synergy" is actually a potential problem when establishing high end systems.

It is a good example of my dictum; The greatest impediment to advancing an audiophile system is the audiophile.

I encourage people to roll this around in their mind a bit before responding with a knee-jerk reaction. 

They aren't even audibly transparent.

They aren’t even audibly transparent.

Some are more audibly transparent than others.... It is a relative quality for which the criterial judgement is linked to the perception of a tonal timbre instrument accuracy....

The more accurate an instrumental timbre will be the more transparent the dac will be....

"Ideally" a good dac disapear to let piano or violin only in existence....

Numbers means something for the designer work, but it is the designer ears who judge at the end....Not numbers written on a white paper ....

@listening99 I am not trying to shut anyone down, but it is also important to talk about how people on this forum are constantly taking the "I'm right, you're wrong" argument approach rather than just trying to help educate others by sharing their experiences and impressions. I hope the tone will turn around because this is the place I learned about all of my gear. Never would have found it without the contributions of many posters. And as @grannyring accurately points out, the aggressiveness that's so prevalent has driven away many of the voices who were here just to share, educate, and learn. It's a shame.