High resolution digital is dead. The best DAC's killed it.

Now, you may not like hearing what your music sounds like, you may want distortion or coloration, in that case I would look at tube DACs or some poor measuring DACs from Audio-GD or similar.  But if you want to hear the music as recorded, the DAC3 L and Qutest are the best for the ~$2000 price range.

Not the first time I've read similar from you. Have you actually heard some of these DACs you so easily disparage? In fact, you seem to have opinions on many, many components (not just DACs) and I'm genuinely curious if you've heard them all. Are you in the industry?

BTW, I'm also curious to know which components comprise your audio system. Care to share?

I am of two minds.  I have about 8K red book titles ripped to flac. Recently I upgraded my bridge to a SOtM sMS-200 Neo and was blown away.  My little Teac NT-503 never sounded better.  When I added the external word clock and Ben's Illuminati DC power it was unbelievable.  The CDs were alive!  But...  I also have quite a few HiRes files that sound great too.  I have found that those DSDs from analog master tape just sing.  Yeah it's mostly the mastering, but the best sounding files in my collection are DSD256s.

All that said, I have started buying 10" Jazz and Classical records.  In mono!

I think it's gotten to the point that it depends on the quality of the recording. You can get almost everything out of almost all recordings at Redbook quality, but a few excellent recording can be milked even more with higher quality files.

Great discussion!
Any opinions on the NAD M51 DAC?
I sold my Benchmark and got this three years ago.  Dunno if it is better as I sold the Benchmark first and did not do an A/B comparison

The Redbook playback is so good high resolution is almost not needed.

Agreed. I have owned 5 dacs in the past two years. Two of them upsampled to DSD. With DSD upsampling, I felt the sound was washed out and flat compared to playback using 44.1/16.

Presently, I have a Benchmark DAC3L (used primarily in 44.1/16 mode) and a Border Patrol DAC SE, both currently manufactured. Although they are quite different sounding, they both in their own way bring a liveliness and fullness to the sound that I quite enjoy.  No upsampling required.