What the Best Dac have you heard or owned. How could you tell it was that good.

@calvinj   I have heard the Esoteric N01XD, but not in my system. I was also very impressed by it. I am a BIG fan of Esoteric gear. 

@daveyf i thought it was really good.  I like my dac more but the esoteric got a lot right 

@calvinj   I did notice that the upstream gear has a lot to do with the ultimate SQ. In my case, I use a Esoteric SACD player as a stand alone transport. If the server or transport is not that synergistic with the DAC, this can have an impact on the SQ. It does seem that Esoteric DAC's work best with upstream Esoteric transports/servers. Although I have heard some great sound from a Esoteric DAC and a Aurender server. 

@daveyf exactly. I have infigo dac, cables, and amplifier. I actually use a stripped down mini pc with only audio optimized as my streamer and it’s controlled and runs Audirvāna Studio for playback. Great sound.

Has anyone tried the Holo Cyan 2? It seems to me that DACs are fairly overrated in terms of the difference in sound quality in a system compared to the amp, speakers or initial source. This seems like a quality product at a reasonable price rather than spending $5k - $40k to get some very small differences.