After I bought the Schiit Bifrost Multibit to replace my old Yulong DA8 and trying to listen to the advantage of this "multibit" DAC, I started to feel like the "multibit" is more marketing maybe, that and measurements of the cheaper Schiit DACs are making me wonder about things.
As for why I chose RME it is a bit of a long story; a few months ago I bought the Massdrop JBL LSR-30X, and I can honestly say the sound quality for just $280 (even lower now) was just mind blowing to me. I usually listen to my HD 800, and I was expecting the JBL LSR-30X to sound vastly inferior and honestly I did not feel like the 30X sounded vastly inferior at all. I mean sure the HD 800 digs deeper and has more detail but the JBLs sound so good to me. In terms of enjoyment level the JBL is arguably even better possibly (HD800, I am slowly finding sounds a bit too bright for me?), my only gripes with the JBL is that the hiss at idle is very annoying cause I use them in nearfield and the connection options are all pro connection options and not really suitable to what I am using (Had to buy a few extra rca to xlr cables to get the thing to even work).
Since that experience with JBL LSR line I been looking to try out audio equipment from companies that make products for professionals, not for the consumers. It seems to me IMO that these professional companies do a lot more actual engineering into there products than the consumer companies (feels like they just do a lot of marketing). RME seems like a respectable professional company to me so that is what I went with.