What is the best DAC ever made?

There is NO such a thing as the best DAC ever made. And there won't be one!!!!

Hi Dev,

When I say "bright" or "desintegrated", I mean in compare with...
Guy who bring Tube DAC said that this DAC is best he ever heard.
But after comparision in my system and than in his own, he agreed with me. So, this is just good expirience for you to think to try to compare.
As for me, after Emm and Berkeley I'm moving to Scarlatti.
All the rest sound poor in compare!
For my taste.

Dev, did you have the ARC CD7 prior to the TubeDAC? Did you have a chance to audition the latest versions of the EMM and or Berkeley? I'm sure the Scarlatti is good (I would hope so), but really viable for me. I think all of these are likely to be excellent, none is poor - but I will say that the EMM (CDSA, upgraded version) is very impressive to me.

Man, what a question and you expect to ever get a definitive answer? Look at the responses and you can see that pretty much if 100 people respond you will get 60-100 different answers. I have been in the hobby for over 25 years now and from what I can see to each his own! Yes, there are some statement products out there that are considered the BEST for a short time but they always get replaced by newer and "better" in no time! Just read some of the audio magazines out there and you will agree! One thing I just know by now is that each opinion is worth a penny and is pretty much useless unless you experience the product by yourself. What "tastes" good to me might be tastless to you.

I usually get this type fo questions by people outside "audiophilia": What is the BEsT speaker out there? What is the BEst company in Audio? What is the Best amplifier? What is the Best cup cake? The best for one is the MOST expensive. TO another is the "best sounding" for HIS or HER own tastes.

Sorry for being in a "philosophical" mood but the question did strike me funny. Please do not get me wrong. I enjoy reading the responses but if you try to make an assessment of what you learn you can go crazy. What amuses me to no end is that people actually TRY to respond to a question like this. They usually talk about their latest acquisition or something they dream about but rarely have any serious experience with. In both cases any response to what is BEST is at best subjective and in many cases very misleading.

Anyway, enjoy the hobby!

Hi Murataltuev, thanks for the response. What tubes were being used in the Acustic Arts Tube dac, did you guys experiment with any others and what digital cable were you using along with the connection and of course transport. If you used it with the original tubes you never heard the dacs true qualities. I will keep those pces that you have mentioned on my list to get to compare. Referring to Teajay's responses about AA product I have found in the past to have a similar taste and when I tried different pces found to be on the same page of what my thoughts are. That being said there are so many flavours of sound and the rest of your set-up also greatly depends on the end result so possibly yours and mine just differ which is okay.

Hi Pubul57, if you read my past threads you will see that my answer would be yes to the cd7, it's been a long time now since so you would need to read through to find what my thoughts were. Good to read that you are happy with what you have, that's what it's all about.

Guys who are ranting about the word "best", anyone who has been in this hobby for any length of time knows there is no best in anything so don't get so worked up about when you read a thread referring to such.