Are DAC's overpriced?

Aside from the preamp choice, (the Parasound P6 is an excellent one), you could add the Oppo UDP-205 as your CD/DVD/Blue-ray source because it has the famed ESS Sabre ES9038Pro DAC. In addition to any type of disc, this unit has a ton of ways to add a digital source - HDMI, ethernet, wireless, coax, Toslink, and USB DAC inputs.  The accepted formats of the digital source start with simple mp3 and go up to DSD and MQA files.  Hook this up to your preamp using the HDMI (analog only), unbalanced (RCA), or balanced (XLR). Enjoy!

The Oppo costs ~$1500 if you can find one - Oppo recently stopped making them.  They will only get more valuable as they become scarce IMHO.

I owned a wyred4sound DAC1LE femtoclock, well over $1k, sold it to play around with analog for a while, ultimately replaced it with an iFi DSD Black Label which far surpassed the W4S in SQ and flexibility.   DACs are still changing rapidly and the quality one can get for under $300 is astounding, IMO.  

It all depends on what you want your system to sound like.  If you can use a soldering iron then change a few parts in your CD and pre and see what happens.  Most of the DACs I have heard in the $2K to $5K range really don't float my boat.  They very similar characteristics some do on one thing better than the other but not much to my ears in sound differences.  The Berkeley Alpha DAC mention was nothing exceptional when I owned it. Same with the Benchmark.  The Schitt again to my ears nothing special.  To me you are better off modifying one of your components that to buy a cheaper priced DAC.  You do not need a very expensive transport either as mentioned above to mate with a higher priced ( better DAC price does not dictate the sound).  These DACs if you look under the cover are not using any special parts like V-Caps, Duelands, Caddock resistors so to me they are nothing special.  You can but these better parts in your current components and to me achieve a much better sound in your system.

Happy Listening.  

OPPO 205....... 3500$

wow

You are getting a lot of varied opinions, bogus results and misinformation here.  Be careful what advice you take seriously.

Al it takes is a jittery source and all DAC's will sound similar.

Al it takes is a cheap active preamp to make everything sound homogenous and 2-D.

Systems are complex and every single part of the system from the power to the cables to the components, signal processing and software apps must be optimized in order to get stellar results.  Any one of these that is sub-standard can ruin the whole pie.

Not that you need to spend a fortune to achieve this.  On the contrary, if you are smart and selective and take advice from the RIGHT people, you can get there on a budget.  I think for an entire system, the threshold is probably $20K-$30K.  Anything below that will tend to be mid-fi with 2-D presentation between the speakers IME.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio