@willemj - I can see that you are definitely a person who is completely reliant on specs and you seem to have the traditional old school opinion that cables do not matter at all. That is perfectly fine. You are perfectly okay to disagree on certain points, but please do not drop down to name calling or insulting people because you do not agree with their points of view. This creates a situation where there is no objective discussion and the thread degrades into a flame war.
Please always try to approach things with an open mind. The traditional engineering approach that states "since a fact is written down as a fact, it is therefore always a fact" is not always correct. We are always discovering new things. Also, the engineer who believes that something is fact may not be able to hear the differences that certain audiophiles can hear.
I took a quick look at your ODAC. I would not say the specs are that great (for a DAC chip). The (now aging) ESS 9018 beats the specs of the ODAC. The ODAC states lowest THD at 0.0015% and DR of >112db. The ESS 9018 THD is 0.0001% (-120db) and DR of 129/135 db. However, this does not necessary mean that the ESS DAC will sound and be superior over your ODAC. There is a lot of missing stuff here such as I/V and LPF audio stages, which will work on further shaping the waveform that is just flat DC voltage injections from the DAC chip. We haven’t even talked about power supply (such as high capacitance, linear power supply filter, cable material, etc.). The ODAC is powered from USB cable, which is a bottleneck and, in most cases, will have a switching power supply from the transport (definitely switching if it is from a common computer).
The ODAC is also designed by NwAvGuy. I’m sure the design is fine, but I have read NwAvGuy’s posting on op amps and I don’t necessarily agree with all his points, especially his statement on the "MYTH" most op amps sound different. I have tested many different op amps in a highly ideal analog circuit. This means a high capacitance (2 x 10,000uf) linear power supply with R-Core transformer, fully discrete Class-A based voltage regulators, very high end electrolytic capacitors with minimal electrical resonance, OCC solid-core chassis wire for power cable, film-on-foil feedback capacitors, etc. etc. In all cases, I can definitely hear differences between op amps. And the specs on an op amp do not necessarily mean they will sound good. You can disagree here if you wish. However, for those of us who can sit down and hear the differences, this is a fact for us that there are differences in different elements.