8 Reasons why you should buy an $50,000 DAC

You work hard you play hard so do your research and enjoy the music.

When you want to improve your system, it is hard to decide what to invest in.  This is my experience.  I have a large room with high ceilings, and with the digital side of my system, I was hearing some harshness  in my system at high volume, which was causing fatigue.   As a modest income guy, that mostly buys used equipment that I could not afford new, I was not too motivated to change out my components...  I was primarily focusing on changing my DAC, thinking I had to go RTR.  In the end,  I decided to focus on where I had skimped before changing components.  First, I moved my speakers farther apart and changed the toe in.  Then, I upgraded all my interconnects, speaker cables, power cables, added footers, changed all my worn reissue preamp & amps "small" tubes to high quality vintage tubes, and added an audiophile grade rack.  Viola !  that fixed it.  What a huge difference !  Everyone noticed the difference, and I can now play at any volume without fatigue.  So, the lesson I learned is that an expensive DAC will probably improve your sound, but, may not fix what you are trying to fix if you have weaknesses elsewhere... 

PS.. although now, I would like to hear what a higher quality DAC will do for me. lol... 

The  real question is a $50k DAC justified in SQ. The answer is NO! There is practically no studio anywhere in the world that uses a $50k DAC. The people that made, mixed and mastered the music don't hear the frequencies, the depth, or the imaging that a DAC like that theoretically puts out. The extra bandwidth that a DAC like this may give you is not mixed or added into the recording at all it is literally noise.

That being said it is off the audiophile world to simply say, cool it sounds great, or my 80 inch sub is amazing you've got to listen to it is perfectly valid but it's just an entertainment and has nothing to do with fidelity. 

I could never afford an expensive DAC such as that but applaud people that can and have the hearing to tell a difference.  

I did buy a couple of cheap ones just for the heck of it to decide if I could even tell a difference. The 1st one yes, and actually like it. The 2nd no. 

Reminds me of years ago when I could actually afford my first really nice system. Bought all the stuff, put it together and thought WTH? My garage system that cost a fraction of it  sounded almost as good. Live and learn in this hobby. 

It is great to hear you are loving your DAC. It is not surprising. Every large investment I have made has rewarded me with more than I expected. I do my research of course. There have been some instances when a greater investment did not result in better sound (different, but not better to me) and I did not make the investment. 

I love the comments about it not being worth it. First it is exceedingly unlikely they have had the DAC (in this case) in their system and evaluated it. Also, pretty unlikely they have the means to purchase it. I have a $20K DAC. If I was wealthier I the investment of all my components would likely be proportionally larger than they are now. Audio is important to me, and I have not experienced drop off in improvements in sound quality with increased investment. Some house sound are in the wrong vein for me... but I don’t buy those.