But measurements do tell us everything we need to know about a DAC: does it accurately convert a digital signal to an audio signal without adding noise and distortion.
None of the excellent DAC measurements have any bearing on what we actually
hear.
There's a reason why tons of Topping DACs flood the used market, because people are dissatisfied by how they sound.
Heck my Apple Dongle has a higher SINAD than the Yggdrasil (according to Amir's chart), but it sounds worse than the headphone jack in the armrest of an airline seat in economy class.
The Yggdrasil does sound better than it, but it has its own issues that are not shown in the measurements that Amir has taken. For example, the Yggdrasil has a dynamic range compression that pushes the background sounds in recordings forward to make them louder than they are in an attempt to appear "higher rez". There's also treble detail loss and bloat added to the upper bass response, which can be heard in a direct comparison with other DACs.
None of these characteristics correlate to any of the DAC measurements that Amir has taken.
One area where we might be able to match the measurements with what we hear is if a DAC has an adjustable output level, sometimes you can see in the measurements the distortion increase depending on how much VRMS is being output. Subjectively, this would result in some kind of a tape saturation like effect that is audible.
That said, most modern DACs, including the poorly measured Yggdrasil, still measure well enough that you will hear distortion from your transducers first as you go into higher loudness levels.
That's one of the things the speaker guys on ASR get. They recognize how silly it is to be wowed by a DAC that measures so well down to -150db when -120db works just as well. Again, that's because your first source of distortion will likely be from the transducers than it ever will be from a DAC.
When it comes to buying a DAC, you should buy it for the digital filter, because that is going to determine how it will sound for the most part. Other parts in the DAC less so, but stuff like the quality of the power supply and filtering does determine a large part of bass quality. Or the kind of opamps (or discrete) found in the analog output stage.
If you truly believe and experience that all the DACs sound the same, then just buy for the features you want or whatever is cheapest since it doesn't matter.