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

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. 

@rlawry 

Which $360 DAC is?  Thx.