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

Hi! I went from  a Benchmark DAC1 USB to a Lampizator Amber DAC. The sonic difference in favor of the Amber Dac was HUGE! Really, everything changed for the best, i.e., more detail, more space between instruments, The soundstage became wider, deeper and more forward the listening position. The bass with the Amber Dac has more impact and goes deeper. I mean the difference is night and day!  

Greetings!

I went from the DAC in my laptop to a $168 DAC/AMP to a $99 standalone DAC to a $360 DAC to a $3500 DAC to my current $11,000 DAC.  And yes, there was a significant and easy-to-hear improvement with each step upward in cost, so all is right with the world in that I got what I paid for.  That being said, the cost differences in sonic improvement escalated exponentially.  Or as Stereophile once put it, it was a phenomenon of the ever increasing cost of the ever decreasing difference.

@rlawry 

Which $3500 DAC and $11,000 DAC?

would you equate percentage increase like, say, 20% better?

The $3500 DAC is the Auralic Vega, the $11,000 DAC the Bricasti M1SE with network streamer.  It seemed that the sound improvement between the lesser DAC steps were maybe 40% improvement, the Vega to M1SE was about 20-30%.  I wonder how much more improvement there might be over the M1SE but I seriously doubt I will have funds to find that out.

The thing about increasingly expensive DACs in a really good system is that small differences are increasingly significant in the sound presentation. I have the most pleasing DAC I have heard in my system (the Audio Research Reference CD9SE).. before that a Sim Audio 650D (now replaced by the newer and better sounding 750) and a Berkeley Reference Alpha 3 ($17K, $18K, and $22K). Each were excellent and sounded far better than notably less expensive ones. Each worthy of their cost because of their sound quality.