It's derailing the thread to ask how phase error in a DAC on such a minute scale makes any difference when speakers and rooms have a huge amount of similar kinds of errors? Why is it derailing the thread to ask if "measurably inferior" performance is actually audible? Are we entertaining ourselves here by talking purely in theory, or are we shopping for a nice DAC for a bat?
Quite frankly, if I can't hear it, I refuse to worry about it. I'm not going to pay more money and jump through hoops unless it actually makes a difference to human ears. That's why I don't pay any attention to jitter (inaudible), lossless vs high bitrate AAC (inaudible), high sampling rates (inaudible) and high bitrates (inaudible). From the tone of your response, I'm guessing I can add minimum phase filtering to the list. The thing I don't understand is why people give so much attention and energy to things that don't matter while not addressing the elephant in the corner- speakers sound better than headphones, getting better speakers are usually the best way to improve sound quality, balancing your frequency response is the best tweak you can do without buying new equipment, and treating your room to avoid unwanted reflections is the best way to improve the timing of your system.