Higher End DACs

Playback Design is the only DAC on the planet to my knowledge that uses Proprietary PLink Connector from Streamer to DAC (Fiber Optic)

Meitner uses a proprietary Optical Link ("Optilink") which is a glass fiber cable to connect the Meitner/EMM Labs DAC and Transport (or streamer, if you go that route).

the Lumin X1 and the new Linn Klimax DSM DAC both take a Fibre Optic cable as a streaming input.

New Linn Klimax DSM With Organik DAC - Bits and Bytes - Audiophile Style

Anybody on this thread have a listen to the new Gustard X26 Pro DAC. I own one and think it is  great DAC using a Sonore OpticalRendu for streaming. I am not looking to change it but was curious as to how it compares to more expensive DACs.

@rower30   Great points and perspective.

@rower30
...Audio is like the stock market, a commodity price has been set with the weaknesses boiled in. If a $2,000 level technology DAC was really as good as a $35K DAC, the answer would not stay a secret for long...

Well said, with the caveat that rich DAC buyers have good ears.

Thanks for listening,

Dsper

Recently,  REMASTERO (https://www.remastero.com/pggb.html) announced PGGB offline remastering with sinc filter reconstruction using hundreds of millions of taps and advanced noise shaping. The process is offline ...meaning a source file is converted to a ultra high resolution WAV file and fed to DACs capable of 8fs, 16fs or higher sample-rate USB/DX input.  I recently evaluated this with my Chord Dave and compared it to Chord MSCALER or HQPlayer upsampled source files.
No contest ... the PGGB version was stunningly better and points to the possibility that essentially infinitely wide filters can achieve optimal Nyquist-Shannon reconstruction. And since all the intellectual property is offline, I think this opens the door to inexpensive end-game DACs.

Its worth your own eval and listen using the free 30-day trial.