Are DAC's overpriced?

I recently purchased a Denafrips Pontus R2R external DAC that I'm very pleased with.  A bargain, I feel, at about $1800 US Dollars.  My thoughts are posted on their website:

https://www.denafrips.com/single-post/2018/12/10/Pontus-DAC-New-York

There's also a more in-depth Positive Feedback review at:

https://positive-feedback.com/reviews/hardware-reviews/denafrips-pontus-dac/

Cheers - Michael

Maybe the new Nagra DAC just $65,000.

The Crane Song Solaris got a recommendation from a review site. I never heard of it until recently.
http://www.cranesong.com/SOLARIS.html
It retails for around $2K and is used in many studios and is suitable for home use.

Check out the Jitter Page where you can download jitter loaded files and test whether you can hear what it does to music. I didn't, but for those who are adventurous enough, it can add to the debate whether jitter can influence sound as we hear it and not just reside in the noise floor.

All the best,
Nonoise

So, amps are behind DAC’s...



D/A conversion technology has outpaced the development of new power amplifiers. This means that the power amplifier has become a limiting factor in many audio systems. For example, the noise and distortion produced by the Benchmark DAC3 D/A converter is 20 to 30 dB lower than that produced by most high-quality power amplifiers. Until now, this meant that the DAC3 could not be fully appreciated. Benchmark set out to solve this problem by creating an amplifier that matches the performance of the DAC3.

I owned the Benchmark DAC3L + AHB2 amp for about a year. I took both to an audio store and compared them to Mark Levinson 585 (and also some ML separates) with the Magico A3. The ML gear sounded a heck of a lot better. I did not play the volume too loud so I was not straining the AHB2. I sold my Benchmark gear after that. After that demo, I realized that specs are not the end all.