Dac Technology Mature?

@ejr1953 I agree with you that dacs have greatly improved over the years, but not because of radical improvements in dac chips. More so for the reasons I eluded to earlier. Component and material quality, psu’s, upsamplers, clock accuracy, boards, tolerances etc have all improved over time, as has manufacturing equipment (incl: computers).

DAC technology will continue to improve but the big question is will our ears continue to hear the micro improvements? I know my carpenters ears will not. I'm fine with a Grant Fidelity tube dac. 
Though my friend has a Lumin D1 and I was very impressed. 

MickeyB;

Good Point
I know my ears will not keep up.

A bunch of interesting points in the discussions

jeff

 

No question DAC technology has matured.  I had a half dozen DAC in the past several years priced under $1K and recently picked up an Ayre QB-9 DAC and the SQ improvement was stunning.  The fact of the matter is that you have to spend north of $2K to hear much improvement over, for example, the internal DAC in the Oppo 205.  

Hi, First post here...professional classical musician and recordist as a serious hobby for 20 + years. So I’ve been on the other side of the audio process, so to speak, and am just curious to read what the audiophiles are up to.

So hello everyone.

Here’s my take on ADCs and DACs - IMO, they have already attained a level of near perfect transparency (assuming a professional level of converters designed with that goal in mind).

On top of that, the sample rate conversion has become stellar. For instance, when downsampling from 88.2 or 96 Kh, 32 bit float to 44.1 16 bit dithered and noise shaped in Izotope RX, the original and down sampled version with a phase reversal null perfectly in my DAW in the audible rang. Listening back it’s dead silent at full volume except for a slight bit of white noise (the dither and headphone amp noise).

So if it is transparency you are after, they are pretty much there already. Probably just small improvements are on the way.

If you are looking for a more euphonic sound that can match analogue, then I’m sure there is much more to come.