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

@kairosman +1

I must also admit that our biases, both positive and negative biases, play a role. For instance, the fact that ASR shills for Topping negatively affects my impression of their products in much the same way if your ex-wife likes strawberry ice cream. It doesnt matter thereafter, there will be no strawberry ice cream for me. For the record, I’ve been happily married for 26 years. Also for the record, I have no idea if my ex likes strawberry ice cream…I never listened to her long enough to find out.

@kairosman

As an aside, it’s interesting that "superbly" measuring DACs like my Topping D90SE don’t sound as good as the more expensive DACs in my collection that measure comparatively poorly... whatever design and parts choices that lead to great measurements don’t correlate with great sound necessarily.

This is not a surprising finding. I have read comments from DAC designers/builders who say that even inexpensive off the shelf Op-Amps are capable of surperb measurements on a test bench. But they stated that this result is not correlated with good sound quality.

This explains why some lower cost DACs can have excellent performance numbers yet disappoint when actually listening to recorded music.

Charles

@charles1dad yes it's obvious that if measurements captured ALL sonically relevant parameters then excellent measurements would correlate strongly with sonic excellence. One such parameter is soundstage width/depth - which set of measurements reliably correlate with a wide/deep soundstage? Answer: nobody seems to know. Why is there not more curiosity about answers to these sorts of specific questions amongst the measurements-first crowd? Even I would be interested in studies done to determine the answers, so one is left to surmise that crowd aren't interested really in science as much as they are interested in being right and trolling those who aren't convinced that the current sonic measurements regime is a completed field of study.

@kairosman 

Good observations. I would bet a paycheck that your Topping DAC measures better than your LampiZator Baltic 4. I’d also bet that it doesn’t sound nearly as good as the Baltic 4 DAC.

Charles 

@charles1dad

please come over this weekend, i am hosting a listening party using oscilloscopes only... we will look at sine wave traces at varying frequencies of a dozen dacs --- be prepared to be impressed!  we can sit outside on the deck enjoy the crisp winter air!!

oh yes, several of my deaf friends will be in attendance...😂🤣😅😆