How easily can you distinguish between different DACs?

@invalid

The best way to determine the ability of the digital portion of a DAC is the signal to noise ratio. I would go with whatever DAC had the most neutral analog section be it discreet or an op amp. There are some pretty wild chips out there today and the only thing discreet will do for sure is cost you more. 

Because I require more DAC channels than most two channel people I go for digital preamps that have the DACs built in. I require 6 Dac channels. The unit that I will have shortly has 8 DAC channels built in along with room and speaker control, bass management and high resolution digital EQ. I digitize my phono stage.  

I can sympathize with this question, as well as the various responses.  Because I was unable to distinguish in double-blind listening over a couple of weeks a Weiss 502 from the DA2 built into my C2700, I sent the Weiss back (shout out to The Music Room for being super easy to work with) and instead went back to the source for improvement, adding an Aurender N200 to my system (replacing my PC running Roon as digital streamer/server).  I believe this will allow easier distinguishing of DAC quality, as the rest of my system would be judged as "reasonable" by most (MC462, C2700, B&W 802D4).

One more thing - I think double-blind tests are interesting and certainly good data to have as you make a judgement about how new gear sounds (or doesn't) to YOU (even you capricious folks out there LOL) - but long-term listening in a relaxed (not analytical) state is the real tell for me.  After all, listening in that state is where most of us want to experience magic.

@mhwilliford

Congratulations and good call on improving the source by switching to N200. Now if you bring a high quality DAC, you should be able to appreciate the nuances (or not) over your integrated DA2. I also like your approach of long term listening before forming any conclusions.

I believe the main issue with DAC costing 2x, 3x or 4x times is not whether they sound better or not. It’s the added cost that doesn’t quite commensurate with the perceivable differences in SQ. Most folks are quite content with a $1500 DAC that gets them close to 80-85% performance of a DAC’s costing, say $5K.

Not sure if the hearing test question was directed at me, but in my case I did have one done a few months back.  I don't hear past 13k or so, I think.  It might have been even lower.

mhwilliford, have you noticed differences in sound after going to an Aurender?  

I didn't realize what was used as a server had an impact on the sound.

@ invalid, 

I offer you should rethink your chip vs discrete preamp blanket bias. It was very true back in the days of TLO72's.  By the time of the NE5558 ( POOGE, biased into class A) it got a lot fuzzier. With modern OPA series chips, it comes down to execution.  Just picking OP-Amp vs. discrete is no guarantee the discrete was well executed either. Some can be of course. So "it depends".  An inherent advantage of discrete is higher current so the possibility of cable impedance matching at the load end may have some possibilities.  Paralleling op-amps can do the same thing.