What makes a DAC so expensive?

I have been thinking about the same thing.  You can easily buy a streamer with a built in DAC for less than the cost of a DAC.

But forgetting that, what seems odd is that a stand alone clock for the DAC often cost as much as the DAC with its built in clock, or streamer/DAC with its built in clock.  Reading between the lines, a number of clock purchasers' comments allude to a "incremental" improvement, and others don't sound quite sure there was any improvement.

Just my observation from reading here, no practical experience so I am open to being corrected.

Some simple rules around development, manufacturing, and marketing:

• All of the above have a fixed and variable costs associations.
• All costs increase exponentially for each gain beyond a certain baseline- picture a hockey stick- this includes development costs, manufacturing costs, and marketing costs. (someone will argue fixed do not, but for additional gains the expertise, techniques, equipment, and segmentation will  be more expensive and specialized.
• As you segment and specialize, the market shrinks exponentially, so absorption will need to be spread across fewer and fewer units; result price/costs goes up at a commensurate rate.
• The higher the price point-due to everything above- the greater the  curb appeal costs- increasing everything just discussed. Most people who will pay the highest end price point will also want the highest end window dressing and usability (think how well a Ferrari with the body design of a Yugo would sell).

All this adds up to the fact you can buy an adequate or even very good DAC for under a couple hundred bucks (maybe even less than $100)  that is in a nondescript metal case with minimal user conveniences. Every incremental advance beyond that the price will go up at a hockey stick rate. This is not unique to Audio.

Look at photos of the insides of the four Denafrips models.  There are very distinct and noticeable differences.

I was going to get on and say exactly what Bill did.. @grannyring .  

Here's a link to the dac I suspect he was talking about. https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-210bb/images/stencil/2048x2048/products/156/1340/Mystique_EVO_Inside...

Good luck getting those parts for $200.

And in my experience, when a designer uses high quality parts like these, that means they’ve got a product where they really care about the sound and have carefully manicured it’s performance. I bought my audio Mirror dac because of this reason and have not been disappointed. I’m totally satisfied, but would also love to hear the mojo dac above because the design decisions you can see from the internal shot are things I’ve found to really matter in my own component builds (independent power supplies, solid core silver wire, electrical isolation, quality choke-based smoothing, etc.).