When Will the DAC Singularity Be Reached?

I believe this is true :

I believe that DAC singularity point has been reached already.

I believe this not because i had much experience with high end dac or dac in general...

i believe it because i listen classical music and non amplified music and the timbre experience, the holographic 3_d soundfield i experience now with a low cost dac prove to me that Dac technology is mature... i dont partake ASR opinions about Dac... but they are not completely wrong either about dac... Amplifier is another matter...

i tuned my room then i learned what are the main acoustic concepts and factors and i am able to sense them if they are lacking...

For sure a low cost dac so good it can be will not rival a high end one ... upgrade is always there as possibility... But the basic situation with dac is not the same as 20 years ago at all...

Then there is a difference bettween dacs levels but what matter now is more the amplification stage or speakers or headphone qualities...My headphone now is a TOP one... I hear every recordings difference with details... My K340 goes under 30 hertz.. It gives me more than most speakers... Anyway in classical recording it sound as speakers filling a room and the soundfield is OUT OF MY HEAD , it depend of the recording process, but is not on a plane curved in my head ... Then if my low cost dac was bad in timbre presentation and in localization or in dynamic or transients , i will hear it... it is not...it does not sound artificial... Analytic yes but with no fatiguing digital glare as i experienced in the past ...My dac is so good , it does not exist for my ears...I did not even imagine to invest in a "better" dac...there is better dac but there is also a S.Q. /price ratio scale...

is it possible to upgrade it ? Yes but the diminushing return treshold for dac is there rather soon than late in a way no other components compared...

For sure on a 50,000 bucks system well done in a dedicated acoustic room my low cost dac will present more limitations than a 5,000 bucks dac... But not so much as to be called "trash"....Sorry it is not trash...I paid it 200 bucks...

Anyway for me conventional dac are now overpassed and made obsolete in a way, by "virtual room" technology created by Dr, Choueri BACCH filters... A genius physicist who work as hobby in acoustic design .. Here we reach with his dac without any degradation of timbre ( the reason for that is in the acoustical physics behind his patented filters) experience perfect localization in a room , for any speakers or any headphone... Why did i would buy a 5,000 conventional dac without the BACCH patented filters ? A better color on my timbre ? I dont need that even now...

Conventional dac are obsolete... People dont know it yet...😊

I concur with what it is said here :

 

 

I used to be on the equipment ferris wheel, going around and around and around. Maybe equipment roulette is more fitting? This DAC, that DAC, this cartridge, that cartridge, amps, etc. Never quite happy. Once I learned all the nuances of speakers in a room, got appropriate speakers, subs, and fixed my room, then I finally got off the equipment merry go round. All those changes I thought I was making, that never seemed to quite do it, were not doing anything. I have easily spend over $20K on DACs over the last decade. Now every DAC in my main system sounds good.

Maybe I am the man out in this discussion, but I would rather be happy and confident in my system than yearn for yet another lateral change. One spot I do agree with @melm is that good headphones are more revealing than speakers.

Because of my journey, like the op, I question the value of expensive DACs. They may be different but different is not better, it is different. Maybe that works for you, maybe it does not. It is working for some people here, but I wonder what are they putting a bandaid over.

 

 

 

 

 

You've been reading too much ASR.  Cheap DACs are not outperforming high end DACs.  

Well, some of them are in the ASR tests.  Where can I see an alternate set of objective measurements that shows they aren't?  Or even a well-managed set of subjective comparisons that shows they aren't?  By well-managed, I mean all other components are kept the same; volume levels are matched;  results are repeatable (that is, the same judgement is reached by multiple listeners for multiple music samples).

Given the slurry of related comments, your ears, the room and the winning hard of synergy it’s hard to know for sure about what’s definitive about a lot of gear. Is that hot new 8k DAC paired with an old 2k streamer? Given the certain proclivity of many here to be natural tinkerers or shoppers DAC parity or whatever component is on trail is hard to nail down. Did you wait hundreds of hours (sux months) before deciding? 
Beyound a certain level mining out a whee bit more is an expensive holy grail. 

I believe that DAC singularity point has been reached already.

I believe this not because i had much experience with high end dac or dac in general...

i believe it because i listen classical music and non amplified music and the timbre experience, the holographic 3_d soundfield i experience now with a low cost dac prove to me that Dac technology is mature... i dont partake ASR opinions about Dac... but they are not completely wrong either about dac... Amplifier is another matter...

I agree with @mahgister, including on his standard of comparison.  Within the last 5 years the DAC industry seems to have fully matured so that digital is fully competitive with any other medium.  It has taken over 40 years for this to happen. There are no trade secrets that would keep a great DAC from being made anywhere.   In an analogous😀 way, analog reproduction has continued to progress well after its media production has basically ceased.

There is, though, a caveat that should be applied to this discussion.  It is the the seeming equivalence made between price and quality.  There are great values in some truly great DACs.  IMO that is principally, but not exclusively, in DACs that are made in China.  My own Chinese DAC has been called, by someone in the industry in Europa, a $10M DAC for $3M.  I'm not here to sell any DACs and there are other Chinese DACs about which the same sort of claim can be made when comparing quality of internal parts and quality of manufacture to DACs coming from the US and Europe.  China produces most of the DACs these days.  Most of them are forgettable (except to the ASR crowd).  But some are truly great.

The relatively inexpensive sacs have gotten much better, as has streaming and the associated control software in the past five years. Sadly, dacs which render human voice naturally (and piano, violin etc), have jumped from $10k - 20k and up. That will never change. I’m happy enough using digital to find new music and for casual listening.