How much does a DAC do the more expensive it is?

This phenomenon  of course applies to all hi-fi components, not only DACs.

But DACs have a unique job to do that is not required of any other component.  And which is impossible to achieve.  The DAC has to reassemble accurately the analogue signal that has been smashed into billions of small pieces when converted to digital.  No DAC can do this with total accuracy in the time domain.  It is possible to spend $50,000 or more trying to do a job that would be unnecessary if the signal remained analogue.  In general, more expensive DACs will give results nearer to the analogue signal.

As @tonywinga says 'The right DAC will make the music connect to you on more than an emotional level.'  Like analogue.

@thyname 

Thanks for posting the late Charles Hanson comments. Much wisdom on display.

The analog circuitry - 99.9% of all DACs are designed by digital engineers who don't know enough about analog. They just follow the app note. The specs on the op-amps are fabulous and digital engineers are inherently seduced by the beauty of the math story. There are minor differences in the sound quality between various op-amps, but it's kind of like the difference between a Duncan-Heinz cake mix and a Betty Crocker cake mix

Wonderful cake mix analogy to make an astute point with regard to Op-amplifier utilization. Mr. Hanson isn’t alone with this observation.

Charles 

I think it’s more about features or decoding the latest file rather than sound. 

I have a great analog rig.  I used to listen mostly to records until I found my "gem" DAC a couple of years ago.  Partly laziness but also having a much larger library of music to choose from I listen to digital 2:1 over analog these days.  Digital has come a long way this last decade.  CDs started sounding better to me by the mid 1990s but still lacked much of a 3D soundstage and the musicians seemed like cardboard cutouts where analog creates a deep and wide holographic soundstage.  These days digital is on par with analog- at least on my rig in creating a large holographic soundstage.

It's not so hard breaking sound down into bits and building it back again.  Take, for example the light bulb.  A battery powered light bulb compared to a 120VAC power light bulb looks the same to us.  Yet the 120 VAC bulb is flickering at 60 Hz.  Now consider the LED light source using 120 VAC.  It's not flickering at 60 Hz, it is turning on and off, almost a square wave at 60 Hz and yet we still do not notice a difference.  Kind of an analogy.  I could imagine if Thomas Edison were alive today he would be championing his classic vacuum light bulb as superior over LED just as he fought Tesla and Westinghouse as they developed AC electric power.  Edison was a proponent of DC electric power and had made a considerable investment in DC power distribution by the turn of the 20th Century.

Young people these days may never experience a true 24 frames per second film projected onto a screen.  I'm not sure film movie theaters still exist, maybe they do. I know we still see 24 fps films on our digital TVs but it's not the same.  I missed the warmth and flicker of the movie film for a while but now I prefer the smoother 30 and 60 Hz refresh rates.

Technology changes and we move on.  The next generation will have no idea the pleasure of a stick shift and the roar of a loud gasoline engine.  They will see the cars of yesteryear as uncomfortable looking dangerous death traps.  Cars have come a long way from making long trips hot, boring and dangerous to being safe and entertaining.  The digital engineers will figure it out.  Digital sound will continue to improve.  The vinyl LP is approaching 100 years- just a decade and a half to go.  Like the Edison light bulb, it has had a great run.  Times are a changing.

An obvious observation but I'll make it anyway:  In general, a more expensive DAC should be constructed better, inside and out, and in theory should last longer than less expensive ones.  Say compare the internal parts quality of one of the numerous S.M.S.L. DACs in the <$1000 range with those by Gustard, Audio Research, Holo May, and others.  Those chosen components from the PCB material to the various resistors, capacitors, inductors, transformers, how well isolation is done, thickness of the chassis, etc., all add up to a device that should still be kicking 10 to 20 years from now instead of dying after 3 to 5. 

Does that matter to you?  To some who change gear often maybe not, but to others assembling a system to last them many years, it can. 

Many would like to buy a DAC and not be thinking of replacing it after one year. They'd rather upgrade say another component or feed one of their other hobbies. 

A long time ago, the rule of thumb was to spend 50% of your budget on speakers and 50% on the electronics.  Is that rule still valid or not? In today's "digital world" is it more like 66% on electronics, 33% on speakers and 1% for accessories?