Comparison of latest DAC chips

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.

DCS Ring dac converters are also similar to the newer top level stuff from Burr Brown and Analog Devices, being hybrid, which are part R2R and part DS, (Delta Sigma, 1bit, Single Bit, ESS, Bitstream) or whatever other pseudo names DS has.

Burr Brown/ Texas Instruments, Analog Devices now are doing "hybrids" with their better d/a converters, 4 or so bits of R2R and the rest DS. This makes them more expensive to make than DS but said to sound better, yet still no where near as expensive to make as full R2R was, the reason R2R was dropped in the first place and 1 bit DS (delta sigma) took over, because it was very much cheaper to manufacturer than R2R.

But things seem to be going full circle again and R2R is being shown for what it is, bit perfect for converting PCM, where DS is just a facsimile.

And many Dac makers are now doing full R2R again in "discrete form", and the results of the good ones are better than the last of the great full R2R converter chips from AD Texas/Burr Brown ect ect

Cheers George

@mtdining It's hard to take stuff posted by people who take extreme black and white positions seriously.  

Just search read and educate at the way PCM is converted in the best possible way.
Cheers George

With bandwidth and sampling limitations, ringing and aliasing artifacts, all digital is only a facsimile of the original. R2R is no better than delta sigma in this respect, and has technical limitations of its own.