For Prepoman and others, please bear with me it is a long tim e ago.
First DAC was a Sharp huge aluminium box that was 8K at the time and I gout it for 2K second hand. It had 2 x burr brown chips
and was I believe 2 or 4 oversampling. It actually sounded quite good, but still digital sounding.
Second was a Pioneer PD91 which was a bit better, again burr brown chips, 8 x oversampling good power supply, nice bass but still 'hifi' sounding.
Third a Meridian can't remember the number, but the square module,r chassis, Sounded much clearer and transparent but was too technical, and I grew bored of it.
Forth was a Pink Triangle Decapo with battery supply pack and 2 x chip modules. On 20 bit it was pretty good, better than the previous ones. John Westlake who designed it went
onto Cambridge audio and the DAC Magic plus other good designs.
Fifth was the Naim CDX, 4K and also nice, more analogue soub ding, good bass, quite warm, nearly right. Still that treble quality didn't quite do it for me. I sold it after 12 months and moved on.
Sixth was a Musical Fidelity Tri-Vista I thin k it was called on demo for 2 months. I already had the A370 Power amp so I liked the brand. It was still not right for me.
A period of demos, visits to hifi shops, Arcam, more Meridian gear, heard an AMR in a mates system, sounded nice, but generally getting bored of looking. I had a basic Audio Note 1.1 kit during this period which was nice, very cheap but punched well above it's price point. I heard some Lampizator DACs last at a hifi show, and they seemed good. As far as I know some are R-2R and some DS. It is hard to really know the actual sound in a show of course. I really only trust a home demo or at the very least a personal session in a demo room with my own music (known tracks).
This to me is crucial, they can mess with your head (ears) at shows with unknown source material.
Then I heard an Audio Note 4.1 and liked it a lot. It was hard to get a demo as I live in Spain, plus I was short of cash, so I bought the Audio Note DAC 3.1 kit. I put that together in 10 hours, worked perfect first time. On switch on, now we are talking, like my old turntable rig. At this time I had 2 x 300B Audio Note mono blocks and a 4K Audio Note pre-amp, so things were getting good now. I was very happy. A year later I upgraded the 3.1 to the 4.1 and it jumped up in SQ again. It had everything I liked in DS but without that artificial treble, or coldness. I can't explain it better than that. I was never convinced any of those previous DACs were music, more hifi to me. It may be me, I am only saying what I hear and my connection to the music.
Recently I have been upgrading more bits in the 4.1 DAC with new Audio Note Kassai caps, Dueland coupling caps, and upgrading the digital board and regulation board. Plus I bought some I/V transformers from a DAC 5 (25K DAC) and they make a BIG difference. I firmly believe this thing is now between a DAC 4.1 and the Audio Note UK DAC 5 Special as regards sound level.
So, as requested, that is my little journey. There are some DS DACs in my demo period I can't remember the models. I basically tried most 5 - 10K DACs made by UK manufacturers and some Japanese makes. It does get difficult as with most DS DACs they began (to me) to sound the same. IMO to get above a certain level it needs to go R-2R or DS seriously well build / designed.
I do seem to prefer tubes as well. Not because I like a rosy glow / warm sound, I actually like big dynamics and tight bass as I listen to a lot of trance and rock. I found the mid-range to be more realistic in the tubed DACs amongst other positives.
I kind of wonder why everyone is so hung up on the story we have all been fed since the 90s about oversampling. It has no logic. There is no more detail to be gained by guessing or over-sampling. It is like an image in Photoshop, upsample it and it gets blurred, there is no more detail there. The whole idea of the up sampling / oversampling thing was to facilitate a cut off filter from 18K to 22K to remove artefacts. The trouble is that filter killed the music IMO. Filtering done in a transformer is much more effective IMO and outside the chip. I am not an expert, all this stuff is out there to read. The best thing is demo a nice R-2R DAC and hear for yourself.
The high res revolution never interested me enough to go for a SACHs player, or DSD. If IO can get a sound I am happy with on Red`Book, and buy any music for under £6 per CD why bother?
It my mind the more components crammed into a DAC to handle these extra formats, the more the sound of RedBook gets watered down, and the budget on that DAC as well.
Basically I think R-2R has come back from there 90s but in a much more developed form, built for serious (niche) audiophiles and many by small manufacturers who are enthusiasts. The massive corporations pumping out main stream gear and who have a 'signature' DS DAC, maybe they are ok? I gave up trying to be honest. The sound David heard on that C1, I am sure (hope) it is available in more affordable designs, I think it is. To try and see about that, I am going to get a demo of an MSB Anaogue and a TotalDAC, maybe the AMR in the UK next year (if possible).
Right now, I am looking at improving my mains supply as the next possible bottleneck, maybe a PS Audio P10 regenerator. The mains in my place is really dirty I am convinced about that.
Hope this helps.
Don't have anything else to add.