@firearm12 i think you are confident in trusting your ears while making choices because you have several years of experience in this hobby and know the kind of sound you want.Why dacs only. I am never able to make out why objectivity is given so much importance. If one is an audio component designer ofcourse he has to use science to produce good hardware. But as an end user why would I bother to value some graphs generated by some test tones. I would rather trust my ears more. They can tell much better if I can emotionally connect to music.
I would cite an example. I bought the much applauded chord qutest dac as an upgrade to an audiogd dac that I was using. Chord was 1.8 times more expensive than audiogd. FYI chord qutest is one of high rated dacs on asr and audiogd is bashed all over. But I could not live with its presentation for more than few weeks. It may be technically and scientifically better than audiogd. Audiogd maybe a trash as per science measurements. But I am happy with my trash. My trash produces guitar and piano tones better than chord could produce. My trash produces more emotional vocals than what chord can produce. Thats what matters, not better graphs.
I remember listening to your set up with the Audiogd DAC and amp (Quad floorstanders). The SQ was superb. I am not surprised objectively they did not measure well.
Maybe in some instances DACs with excellent objective measurements can be removed from the short list of items under consideration?