Aesthetix Romulus Signature Upgrade Worth the $3,000 ?

we are getting closer..I am a big fan of Jim White but IF he sits on his A and does not do MQA I will move...quickly.
What you and many others ignore and what is VERY well understood in aerospace is that spreading development costs as you zeroed out over just a few units can equal the parts cost. The one time engineering cost to implement the new digital FPGA board including DSD and custom filters is part of the $3 K...
Now there MIGHT be $3 K DACS that can compete with a Pandora SIG, but I have not heard them...maybe I should...
BTW there are many common components in aerospace, application and tols change. yes there are unique parts and when there are, they are VERY expensive.

Tomic601,
I'm very familiar with the Romulus Signature and the Eclipse version with the Stealth capacitors. The Eclipse is a clear sonic upgrade. The Yamamoto can't compete with the Romulus in terms of  flexibility and format options,  as it's strictly Red Book exclusively. In terms of sound quality and natural musicality and engagement, Grannyring is on the mark.  The Eclipse  and the Yamamoto DAC provide superb Red Book playback. Both products  are noticeably improved when placed on an Apprentice platform based on my listening sessions. I heard both with the PS Audio PWT which is better than the Romulus internal transport. Full disclosure,  the Yamamoto  is  mine and has Duelund CAST output capacitors and a Synergistic Research fuse in place. 
Charles, 

Tomic, I do understand your point being in innovation & product development. Yes it is part of the cost and spread out over a relatively few units unfortunately. Good point. 

Charles, on Red Book CD spinning the Yammy is a great value and to my ears competes with many bigger dollar units.  You could combine it with a nice Emperical Audio Offramp for great computer audio also. 

As I stated in my first post in this thread, I tend to agree that the cost to upgrade the Romulus to Signature status is on the high side; however I bought my std unit used with the intent to do the upgrade since dsd playback capability was/is very important to me.  With the total cash outlay I have in my unit, given the price I paid for it used plus the upgrade cost, I'm more than happy with my total cost. 

IMHO Jim White is one of the best with respect to digital playback design. I am extremely disappointed that the Signature version still won't do dsd via its spdif inputs despite it still being marketed as having that capability!!  In correspondence with Jim a year ago about this issue he indicated that this feature would indeed become operational, but to my knowledge it is not (recent query to customer service about this remains unanswered). 

During our correspondence Jim asked what other features I'd like to see; I told him that adding I2S input would be great. 

I should make a comment here on the wonderful Star Sound Apprentice stand. I use the less expensive Adona coupling discs and they may not extract the very best performance from these stands. I just am not sure.  I will try the Star Sound coupling discs and see if they make any difference. Just a caution to those reading this thread.