I'd go out on a limb and guess you can probably find a
$100-200 DAC with the same chip in it that no one is
ever going to be able to tell apart from the $10,000 one.
Good news!
You're right, and there are a lot of inexpensive, engineering-driven "audiophile" products that do exactly what you say.
Topping, Schitt, JDS Labs, and SMSL are a few who offer outstanding products in that $100-$200 price range.
I have several pieces of Schitt gear. I don't have one of their external DACs though, the digital pieces I have in my setup have very nice DACs that I like. Those internal DACs have similar chips to what is in the Schitt DACs.
That's true. Also, what we actually hear is the analog output stage surrounding the DAC far more than the DAC itself. That's the part that OEMs either get right or fudge up.
But, a naive implementation (say, throwing it on a computer motherboard where the analog output stage is subject to interference hell) is maybe not going to sound great, compared to a better implementation of a lesser DAC.
You're right, and there are a lot of inexpensive, engineering-driven "audiophile" products that do exactly what you say.
Topping, Schitt, JDS Labs, and SMSL are a few who offer outstanding products in that $100-$200 price range.
For example, here's a unit from Topping that combines a top notch DAC and headphone amplifier for $200. Objective measurements taken with a very expensive AudioPrecision analyzer: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/t...
$129 DAC, made in America, also very close to state of the art objective performance: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/s...
It's fun (and actually, important) to laugh at the audiophile lunatic fringe, but most of us don't play that way.