Does the 'Buck' Start with the DAC?

@three_easy_payments  Thanks for the link. I'll wade into it. : )

@thyname 😄

“Because the DAC is the link between the digital and analog portions”. 
+1, thyname. 
I went through fair share of DAC’s in my pursuit for soul stirring digital front end. The EMM DA2 has ended my quest for a SOTA digital to analog converter under $25K. 
Count me in the camp of ‘Everything Matters’.   

Yes indeed, Ed Meitner makes great DACs. The EMM Labs DACs should definitely be up there, as a SOTA DAC

Imagine if there were incremental differences in playback performance with any server or streamer and you could buy a really good one for 50 bucks . I’m not sure that I would place the dac in the hierarchy of all things .

There is quite a bit of information available in the various reviews of players that suggests the quality of the player is important to the quality of the sound produced by the DAC.  You can't expect a PC or Mac, or any computer with a hard drive to be as quiet, or sound as good, as a player, which is designed to minimize noise and interference in the signal transmitted to the DAC.  

But... I've found that the DAC makes a huge, huge difference in the sound quality of the combination.  I have a number of both, and I've found the sound quality of the Bryston BDP-3 is about as good as it gets for the money (very quiest, very clean signal), and anything above that is likely diminshing returns.

However, I've found the Schitt Yggdrasil is far and away about the best DAC available - just a whole lot more real / live sound, with all of the resolution, transparency, clarity and vibrancy and holographic sound that you will find at virtually any price.   But, as you would expect, the rest of the system must be able to present the sound that it produces, including the player.