I think I will dare to say this (nervously) but I have found a number of multibit/R2R DACs to sound different, and in my opinion better, than more common delta sigma DACs, even though they do not test as well in objective terms.
I have been at this comparison for a number of months in earnest and I am starting to get a sense for why but I am not ready today to post a lot about it. For NOS or plain old DACs, I think Yamaha's YAC514 chip (or YAV514-F is the correct model?) is still excellent at making things sound more real although I've been testing it with Yamaha's post-chip filtering stage which is quite good and that makes a big difference as well. That chip measures pretty well which surprises me. I don't know of a finished product you can buy with that chip at the moment. I am using bits (no pun intended) from one of their very best late 1990s CD changers.
I hesitate to say this here, but
this particular low priced Multibit DAC from a certain US maker and also this
Pegasus DAC do sound so different from my other DACs. And in a good way. I do think it is worth experimenting to see. A lot of things we measure are not necessarily audible or prominent to our hearing and so much music that is recorded and available digitally has constrained dynamic range and is not even taking advantage of the full 16 or 24 or 32 or XX bits available. You can paint an elephant any color you want but it's still an elephant and the gear used in recording over the years and the gear to mix and master only had so much resolution and fidelity on tap.
Another different DAC to try is the
Chord Mojo which is priced pretty well considering it's uniqueness. It has a different and wonderful sound to my ears although I am not as thrilled with the connectivity but it is also meant to do double duty as a portable device.
My personal DAC experiments continue, much to the chagrin of my close relatives, but every time I am startled for a moment by the realism of listening to a bit of music, where my headphones and speakers totally disappear, I am intrigued. Some of these different designs do make some things sound more realistic. Yes, it could be filter strategies but so far I do not think that is what is going on based on my personal experiments.
And I will go out on (another) limb to say that headphones and speakers that are brighter than what I personally consider neutral are more common than I would like, and through the lens, so to speak, of those brighter than neutral devices, I think the differences between the DACs I am mentioning and more common delta sigma DAC designs are a bit less obvious to detect.
For example, a lot of people online (aside from here) somehow think
MartinLogan Motion 4i Bookshelf Speaker is a decent bookshelf speaker. I agree that the fit and finish is amazing, but I had a run at those charming little toys at one point on looks alone and harsh, bright, brittle and fatiguing only begins to describe them and you need to have more neutral speakers for critical listening. Likewise, I am a Grado fan but you need to be able to admit some of the Grados that are so popular, like the
Grado sr80e Prestige Headphones are just not neutral. A lot of folks don't have the luxury of many headphones and speakers to use for critical listening, so keep your end stage (spekaers/headphones) in mind when you compare these DACs.