$100,000, $1,000 and a Happy Meal voucher

The MSB Select DAC costs over $100,000. A decent Eversolo streamer and DAC costs $1,000. And online you will find giant killers for a few bucks and a McDonald's Happy Meal voucher.

I auditioned or lived with a lot in between: the Eversolo A6 Master Edition and A8, the HiFi Rose RS150, my McIntosh MCD12000, the dCS Lina, the dCS Varese and the MSB. The ranking did not follow the price tags. The most expensive was not always the best, and the cheapest was not always the worst.

You do not pay for the chip: off-the-shelf DAC chips do not cost more than $100, so you pay for the implementation, the power supply and the analogue stage. And here is the truth, my truth: dCS and MSB were the closest thing to analogue master tape I have heard, and still not 100 times better than the Eversolo. At that level it is not a multiple any more.

My returns flattened at around $25,000 for my own digital chain. Everything beyond it was wonderful, sometimes magical, and worth it only if the speakers, the room and the amplification can reveal it. If you are planning a $5,000 DAC for $5,000 speakers, ask someone to come to your home and help you rearrange your priorities.

Price tells you what a DAC costs. Your system tells you what it is worth.