DAC diminishing returns

The DAC is your most fertile ground to seek sound improvements in your system. Coincidentally, I have a Schiit Bifrost II. I highly recommend this DAC in it’s price range. I bought it while shopping for a "flagship" DAC.

After lots of research I tried some Chord DACs and eventaully bought their top of the line Dave DAC. I have since added an M-scaler.

I left yesterday for a vacation and loaned my Dave and M-scaler t a friend. I switched back to the Bifrost II for background music while I finished packing up. I was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t find it unlistenable. Nice and clear and solid. But no soundstage. Much less detail, and no grain. It seems like "just music" after moving back from a setup that costs over 20x the price of the BFII.

So good luck and enjoy the ride.

Jerry

PS  Denefrips is as trendy as Apple or Starbucks.  good but in my opinion overrated.

Almost impossible to answer.  Some people would happily pay thousands for a change others (sometimes, significant others) might find imperceptible.

You don’t mention which streamer you are using, give this critical component consideration along with the DAC. I have seen significant gains by upgrading mine. 
 

I bought my current DAC after listening in store and in home.    The analog stage of a DAC is more important with respect to sound quality in my opinion.  Unlikely I will ever use DSD codecs so I bought a non OS DAC with tube analog stage.   

I listened to several below, at and above my budget.  No two sound alike in a very resolving system.   Some are subtle differences some are more pronounced.   In the end pick the one that sou ds best to you .    

Incremental investments in a DAC are completely dependent on your associated components and your anticipated future. So if I had your current DAC in my system (my average component cost is $20K), then upgrading it would provide huge differences each time until I got into roughly the range of my other components. Performance goes up with cost in general.

With the components you have today a Yggdrasil or Denfrips are likely to be valuable upgrades. Now consider you future system. I don’t think I saw info on your streamer. But assuming you are using a PC or Mac… I would upgrade the streamer after the DAC… that should give you a big improvement.

Lets say your current system cost $7K, then if you carefully upgraded all your components one level up, say to the total cost of $14… it would sound a lot better…. If you upgraded to $21K… or $50K, etc… each step would provide a big jump in overall performance. Is this what you see long term? Typically most folks get there by upgrading one component at a time.

If so, then each upgrade should be done with your eye on the next level… matching all the components on that level. This would suggest spending more than just to reach parity with the rest of your equipment.