High resolution digital is dead. The best DAC's killed it.

We own close to 2,000 CD's which we haven't been listening to for years--mainly because we were falling back into vinyl and it was a pain to get a flashlight to search the bookcases for specific CD's. My wake up call that DAC's had come a long way was after purchasing a Bluesound Vault 2i, mainly to archive all of the CD's. I have about 1300 ripped so far (as native resolution flacs). I set up an Intel NUC running the Roon Rock OS and the Vault connected to my Audio Research preamp with Transparent Audio interconnects. After being blown away by listening to just a few of the flac files I realized that the 6-year old DAC just didn't have the mojo the new ones do. Now digital and vinyl are enjoyed at about 50-50 rate. It's like getting all new CD's.

@erik_squires  
 
The Mytek DACs aren’t bad, they are better than average, it’s just the DAC3 and Qutest are a tad cleaner. 

Now, you may not like hearing what your music sounds like, you may want distortion or coloration, in that case I would look at tube DACs or some poor measuring DACs from Audio-GD or similar.  But if you want to hear the music as recorded, the DAC3 L and Qutest are the best for the ~$2000 price range.

Not the first time I've read similar from you. Have you actually heard some of these DACs you so easily disparage? In fact, you seem to have opinions on many, many components (not just DACs) and I'm genuinely curious if you've heard them all. Are you in the industry?

BTW, I'm also curious to know which components comprise your audio system. Care to share?

I am of two minds.  I have about 8K red book titles ripped to flac. Recently I upgraded my bridge to a SOtM sMS-200 Neo and was blown away.  My little Teac NT-503 never sounded better.  When I added the external word clock and Ben's Illuminati DC power it was unbelievable.  The CDs were alive!  But...  I also have quite a few HiRes files that sound great too.  I have found that those DSDs from analog master tape just sing.  Yeah it's mostly the mastering, but the best sounding files in my collection are DSD256s.

All that said, I have started buying 10" Jazz and Classical records.  In mono!

I think it's gotten to the point that it depends on the quality of the recording. You can get almost everything out of almost all recordings at Redbook quality, but a few excellent recording can be milked even more with higher quality files.