Two DACs using the same off-the-shelf chip can sound completely different and... two DACs using completely different chips can sound nearly identical.
The DAC chip (or technology) is but one decision among hundreds.
An off-the-shelf DAC chip from a serious silicon vendor is, on its own, an extraordinary piece of engineering. The companies making them have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in development. The chip itself—heck, for that matter, the technology itself—is rarely the weak link in a high-end converter. The weak links in these types of products live everywhere else: the analog power supplies feeding it, the clock circuitry driving it, the analog output stage that follows it, the digital filtering choices made by the designer, and the layout and grounding of the printed circuit board.
When we were designing the PMG 512, we decided up front that no chip made could do what we wanted. That's why we went with our own architecture. However, that said, the bigger conversation was about the entire signal path — the power, the clocking, the analog stage, how the DSD signals were upsampled and low pass filtered before anything ever reached the output. That's where the audible character of any DAC actually lives.
The core architecture, whether PCM DAC chip or custom DSD like our PMG 512 is the "easy part." Everything that surrounds is where the rubber meets the road.
And the hard part is what we hear at the listening seat — every time, without exception.
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