I fairly recently purchased the T+A DAC 200 after an extended home audition (thanks Juan at Bliss Hifi - great dealer to work with - highly recommended!).
I was also considering going up to the T+A SD 3100 HV - their reference DAC.
Initially, in comparison to my Auralic Vega G2.1 DAC - the DAC 200 was only slightly better - but mostly just different - the Auralic unit is quite good. I had tried the various inputs (AES, s/pdif, AES EBU. All good. All different. (Incidentally, I have not tried the analog preamp section of the DAC as I don’t need that functionality so i can’t comment on that element.)
However, after working with the DAC 200 more, I found out how good it really is when set up and fed properly.
As someone previously mentioned, they have separate paths for PCM and DSD decoding. I prefer the latter. As does T+A.
While T+A has NOS and upsampling built in, I found feeding the DAC with DSD 512 via my Auralic Aries G2 streamer and Auralic Sirius processor to be a particularly good combo. While i may yet try a higher end streamer like Aurender N20 or N30, I think the benefit of such (and I’m a big fan of better streamers) might not be as great because the Sirius processor I already own is really beneficial.
I gather similar results might be achieved using HQ player to do something similar as that is what T+A strongly recommends. Doing so to feed the DSD path is what they suggest is the highest performing channel.
To those others who have the DAC 200 - try it this way. I’d be curious as to your experience. It took the performance of the DAC up significantly for me.
Bottom line is that the DAC 200 offers flexibility that few others have and exceptional performance at its price point. Certainly the best I’ve heard at this price point - and I’ve heard quite a few at the top end, including the aforementioned SD 3100 HV ($35k) from a previous audition, Ideon Absolute ($45k), Linn DSM/3 ($40k), etc. Is it better than those units? No. Is it close? Very. Is it a better value? Unquestionably.
I’m sure the other DACs mentioned in this thread are also very good. I haven’t heard them so can’t compare. So - I hope this helps, but as in all things, YMMV.