There has been a lot of improvement. And to some degree, progress has stabilized... as you can now get far more DACs that perform at the level as analog. However, build quality and detailed design still separate very good sounding from great sounding. As is often used as examples, Schiit makes some great budget DACs... I own one, some of my friends own them. They sound great for the money... but they don't sound anything like a real audiophile DAC... even one produced nearly ten years ago. While it is in the details, the natural sound of an individual instrument, how fully fleshed out the human voice is, how proportionally represented are all the sounds.
Audiophile stuff tends to weigh a ton... because of massive power supplies providing quiet, highly regulated power, highly isolated internal subcomponents, massive enclosures to dampen vibration. All these things, you still don't get on budget gear. Which is why real audiophile gear costs a lot and sounds great for very long periods of time.
