Comparison of latest DAC chips

Another external DAC I am interested in is the Denafrips Terminator. I am looking forward to someone doing a comparison with the Lumin X1.

Just a review on the Holo, it’s good, so are the bench tests, with questions on the NOS mode, which I thought sounded the best on the Alexia 2 and Gryphon Antillion, so big and open and effortless, with no rolling off at the extremities or any dynamic compression.
https://www.stereophile.com/content/holoaudio-spring-kitsun%C3%A9-tuned-edition-level-3-da-processor


Cheers George

It seems the ESS and AKM chips are meeting somewhere in the middle.  The ESS chips were maligned for glaring, too analytical, etc.  The AKM had a darker sometimes murky sound.  Reviews I see say both of them have solved the criticisms.  I know this can be a debate but I can only go by what I read since I can't A/B them.  The new AK4499 is supposed to be more open and has "slam"  I will find out by Friday.  The Topping is kind of heavy so the power supply should help??  Not an EE.

Even in George's list of R2R dacs which he claims are superior (I also have an R2R Audio Mirror T3-SE), it really is the implementation that matters.  The dacs on that list are going to sound very different from one another.  I'd contend that many would be judged as sounding just as different from one another as they would vs a dac based on a different chip/methodology.

Finally, although I do believe in measurements, it's definitely not everything.  I demoed the top measuring dac in the world for a month (as tested by audiosciencereview) and it did not impress.  It was the worst sounding dac among the bunch (Audio Mirror, Matrix, iFi, & Lampizator). 

It's an aural hobby, be guided by numbers, but the ears are the final judge.

Depends on what filters they use or if they build their own out board filter, even R2R dacs use filters. You didn't  like the Mola Mola Tambaqui  at $11,000 ? That's the top dac tested by ASR.

In high end audio, it is always about the chef, not the parts. The Ayre Codex is still the most musical Dac I've heard under $5k. No two R2R Dacs will ever sound the same - they are based on the ridiculous premise that it is possible to find two resistors (in the real world) which are identical. I suppose I've contradicted myself, because R2R Dacs are bullsh** because of the nature of parts, however, if one has listened to Dacs made by DCS and Ayre, it is hard to take most of the stuff posted about here seriously.