The sound quality from DACs - is it all the same?

Is your cousin @jasonbourne52?

In particular, he says an inexpensive DAC from any Chinese company will do better than the expensive stuff. He says fancy audio gear is a waste of money because the data is already bit-perfect.  All DAC chips sound the same. Am I being mislead? 

He also said that any DAC over $400 is a waste of money. Convincing marketing is at play here, he says.

He currently owns a Topping L30 headphone amplifier and D30 Pro DAC. He uses Sennheiser HD 569 headphones to listen to music.  I'm not sure what to think of them. I will report my findings after listening one day! (likely soon, once I get some free time)

What I want to know is if the left channel of my dac sounds the same as the right channel? Do two copies of the same design always sound the same? If your hearing is acute enough to be bothered by differences between samples of the same design you're going to have a really rough time, or a really fun time if you like buying 10 copies of the same  dac and listening for the best one. It may be that cheap dacs with more variation between units have the possibility of striking up magic from time to time. If you've got the ears, money and time, then go hunt for the magical sounding  cheap dac! If there's a real science to separating good sounding dacs from bad ones, that would be interesting to know. So far I haven't heard of any good explanations for why expensive dacs should sound better, other than by adding distortion that some people like. 

I assume that most of the posters on that site have never heard a high-end DAC and are fearful they will get "taken" if they buy one.  All based on the "knowledge" of all the other sheep who have also never heard a high-end DAC, but insist that they know how they will sound based on measurements that one person posts. 

It reminds me a lot of the "fans" group on Facebook for our local football team who all profess to know more than the coach and general manager, even though many of them appear to live in their parent's basements and can barely spell.

What's interesting is that Amir purports to also listen to items he measures, yet his listening impressions rarely line up with mine when I have also heard the item being reviewed.  Confirmation bias?  "It measures like this, so it should sound like that" and voila, it does!

No. 

That statement says it all your expert is none of the above .

hav8ng owned a Audio store ,parts quality and design are essential to good sound as well as quality digital cables which I just was part of extensive testing in our audio club ,and yes even a quality digital cable makes a audible difference .

on average 25% of the price of the product goes into the build including packaging meaning your $400 dac is msybe $80 in parts = Youwill hear a pocket radio 

worth of digital , there are great buys like the $900 Denafrips Aries-2  which is = to a quality $1500 dac , but I feel $2k on up is needed minimum. to get true Audiophile quality digital $$5-6kk  is the sweet spot  after discounts .it’s just my extensive observation , I spend $1k ,and $1500 on digital cables which make a dramatic improvement in the sound of any dac , One of my favorites

Very unique cables from Serbia Final Touch Audio , Lampizator uses these exclusively on their dacs. Very natural -Un digital their Callisto usb is class leading ,the best under $1k usb cable I have heard to date , the top Sinope usb cable I recently bought ,as well as Ethernet cables streaming now sounds so much more detailed and natural ,I just had to point this out.