Next best exponential DAC quality level?

I hear you…ill just lurk, post when the mood strikes, make fun of the absurd from time to time and generally expercise moderation in all I am able lol.

It's funny, the guy who's been here one day telling members how to behave on the forum. And he's been so considerate.

@lowrider57 , well when the members with 4,661 posts don't call out bad behavior I guess the new guy has to do it. Do you consider that a badge of honor and consider the behavior acceptable, including 10 troll posts from one person and frequent attempts at personal degradation, not addressing post content?

I don't.

Op, do you want a real answer, or a made up one?

Does that sound silly? This whole thread is silly.

DAC chips are so good today, that you can make a DAC for a few hundred dollars that is better than human hearing will ever be. Add another few hundred dollars and you can isolate that from any noise source. Add in a low volume premium and for under $1,000 you can have something perfect.

Now if you want something that is not perfect, that will cost you big bugs, because then you are paying for art, not reproduction.

Are we supposed to take people seriously that compare highly distorting tube outputs to no distortion solid state? Seems silly. Changing a setting on a DAC for the output filter and a multi-thousand $$ DAC will create more difference between it and itself than it will with similar filter setting between it and a much cheaper DAC.

You are asking a group of people for an opinion who have never compared without looking at whats playing, without ensuring the volume is exactly the same, or learning what the filters do and why they may impart a sound, hence DO sound different, and who think NOS is the be-all, when it is just a noise mess, but sure it does sound different.

Good luck on your quest, but these are not the droids you are looking for ... I mean the answer to the question you seek.

I rarely taunt other members but you set the tone of this thread by coming out with both guns blazing. Every other post was you denigrating members' contributions. I love the attitude that nobody here is capable of comparing equipment in an audition. The many manufacturers and designers that frequent this forum have too much class to join this thread and tell you what's what. I don't expect these experts to contribute their valuable knowledge to a thread with such mean-spirited overtones. 

Apologies to the OP.