What makes a DAC so expensive?

They aren't even audibly transparent.

They aren’t even audibly transparent.

Some are more audibly transparent than others.... It is a relative quality for which the criterial judgement is linked to the perception of a tonal timbre instrument accuracy....

The more accurate an instrumental timbre will be the more transparent the dac will be....

"Ideally" a good dac disapear to let piano or violin only in existence....

Numbers means something for the designer work, but it is the designer ears who judge at the end....Not numbers written on a white paper ....

@listening99 I am not trying to shut anyone down, but it is also important to talk about how people on this forum are constantly taking the "I'm right, you're wrong" argument approach rather than just trying to help educate others by sharing their experiences and impressions. I hope the tone will turn around because this is the place I learned about all of my gear. Never would have found it without the contributions of many posters. And as @grannyring accurately points out, the aggressiveness that's so prevalent has driven away many of the voices who were here just to share, educate, and learn. It's a shame. 

Mahgister I agree some are more transparent than others, sometimes the ones that measure great sound like hifi and not like real music and some that don't measure as well sound closer to real music. I do not believe the measurements we currently use are always an indication of how something is going to sound.

We think the same then for this matter....

My main point, coming from my audiophile listening experiments and experience, is what people think about the sound of their dac, often comes from a wrong mechanical,electrical and acoustical embeddings of their audio system....

Dac are the most difficult component to buy without trying it....And very good one at low cost difficult to spot....



My best to you