Higher end DACs. My fireface 400 has many DACs in it and it cost £549 new when it came out, in 2007. It sounds obviously better than the ~£80 USB soundcards and various built-in DACs in laptops. I've done A/B testing. (I didn't buy it for the converters btw, I bought it for the features and the build quality, which are unmatched.)
Forget about spending £1000s though. I'm sure that ODAC thing sounds better than the RME, I saw that test where it was identical to the various industry standard units.
Designing the circuitry around the DAC to provide ultra low noise reference voltages, to fully isolate ground loops, and provide a fully linear response (AC coupled, but linear in the relevant range) is not trivial even for 12-bits. It's not the hardest thing in the world, but lots of people do it wrong. Trivial sounding things like using a cheaper capacitor in the low pass filter or not finely regulating your power supply voltage can put audible noise onto things.
Worse of course if the sound card is integrated into a computer due to the opportunity to pick up much greater ambient RF noise from other components, although that is less of a problem now than it used to be back when I could hear my hard drive kicking up on my speakers...
In any event, I'd absolutely believe that the quality between a $100 DAC assembly and a $200 system is enough to be noticeable. More than that and I'm very skeptical. So I guess I don't really disagree with your statement, but I think that in current dollars $100 isn't necessarily enough to pay for solid underlying engineering and good components.
Forget about spending £1000s though. I'm sure that ODAC thing sounds better than the RME, I saw that test where it was identical to the various industry standard units.
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