Are DAC's overpriced?

You can get better performance from a Transport and DAC compared to the CD player, providing you minimize the jitter from the Transport.  There are essentially three ways to do this:

1) Buy a really expensive transport, say $15K
2) Add a Synchro-Mesh reclocker and a good BNC cable to your existing transport and add a DAC with good SQ
3) Buy a DAC that is immune to jitter like the Benchmark DAC3

My recommendation is to get a Metrum or Border Patrol DAC and add the Synchro-Mesh and my Reference BNC cable.  These combinations will enable the extremely low-jitter of the SM to benefit the DAC sound quality because these DACs have no internal reclocking. When you use separate transport and DAC, the only consideration is the jitter and minimizing it.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Steve- would you say the transport is then irrelevant in terms of sound quality if using Synchro-Mesh or Benchmark DAC3 ? Thanks

DAC technology has improved by leaps and bounds in the past couple of years. Which is why I won't spend more that $2K on a DAC, and from a company that will provide upgrades.
My choices would be Schiit, Ayre, Mytek, in no particular order.
Bob

@david12 


excellent post

Get a DAC.  That will allow you to utilize and endpoint and/or server.  Having streaming capability is a great door opener to new music.