Higher End DACs

Just recently I wanted to upgrade from my very nice sounding (for the price) Naim Nova to something better, i had a home demo of the DCS Bartok, whilst a decent improvement over the Nova and I was slightly tempted, however it was in my view not worth the two and a half times price difference over the Nova, couple of weeks later on a chance visit to my local dealer i saw the T+A SDV 3100 HV reference streamer dac and pre amp on display and it was also on sale ex demo at a fantastic price point, promptly took it home for a listen, straight away I knew I had something special, absolutely trounced the Bartok, but then it's twice the price new, very happy I made that trip to my local dealer that day.
Hope you find what you are looking for.

@rgmd11
SDV is a great DAC. But extremely expensive. Nothing against T+A, as I own PA 3100 HV Integrated amp.

I will stick with my MSB Discrete 

I’ve said this before but by the time the signal arrives at the DAC it’s too late. The damage to the audio signal is done as soon as the laser in the transport strikes the spiral data stream on the metal layer. And there’s almost nothing you can do about it. There’s no recovery. So, I don’t get the whole thing with super-expensive DACs at all. GIGO. 🤗

@mikelavigne 
You have an amazing system, and in principle, I agree with you.

The shift from upsampling to bit perfect has been enabled by the explosion in high res recordings.  Clearly, the need and benefits of upsampling decrease as recording resolution increases.

Thank you for your thoughtful insight.

Absolute Sound in January issue just had a really nice write-up on the SDV (and associated transport) - it was great timing for me as I am deliberating this decision and was not familiar with T+A.

I am still quite curious if anyone has had meaningful opportunity to check out a single brand - but across the line:

DCS - Bartok vs Rossini vs Vivaldi

or

MSB - Premier vs Reference vs Select

Esoteric - K-03(x) vs k-01(x) vs k1(x) (i realize these are player/dac)

etc...

at what point do the diminishing returns really kick in for above?  Of course, there is the diminishing return factor to even get into the ‘base’ models of those brands, as well! Lol