IMHO, for the Hi-Fi setups - like many other setups we deal with in our daily life, we feel good and satisfied when they are properly balanced from the 1st ring to the last one in the chain.
For no reason owners - let me say of the $150K Utopia Focal' speakers, would consider one of the Toppings as their 1st ring of their chains, no matter how good or impressive it's measurements are ...
And this is true for each level you look at in the society.
I design, manufacture, and sell (yes, sometime it happens ...
) packaging machineries. My
"premium brand customers" want to pack their
"premium items" by means of
"premium machineries", exactly as the owners of $150K Utopia Focal' speakers want to have a $25K DAC as source.
Being the Hi-Fi a passion based on Hi-Tech items, I feel perfectly conformable in purchasing and testing new devices, provided they are judged as
"well engineered and technically-sound", no matter how their down-scale cost might be with regards to the total cost of my setup.
But for no reason, not anymore, I will purchase a device that has been judged as
"poor engineered and with technical faults" no matter how good it might be judged for it's
"presumably good sonority" by others.
I strongly believe that a device with an optimized technical content cannot fail on it's return of investment in terms of quality at all level.
Going back to our DACs : being the analog section different from a device to another, you are right, they not sound all the same.
For the timing of the 0 and 1 bits,
@amirm 's review demonstrates that timing differences are not audible.
Can you hear the distortion that the USB link may add to your music ? Some people think they can. I am among these people, I prefer the SPDIF over the USB, but I am perfectly aware it is placebo ...
The experts say that - on average, digital links deliver one bit error for every 1,000.000.000.000 bits sent. You can't possibly hear that, sorry.
OK, now you are going to tell us that you can hear the difference in clock jitter produced by that inexpensive DAC over the expensive one ...
@amirm 's audio analyzer might detect the differences, but not our ears ...
AFAIHU, any distortion in the entire setup, if any, it's on the analog side ...