Greetings,

I am glad that the DAC II surpassed everybody's expectations. The Special version of the DAC II turned out to be a supercharged version of the DAC II.
It incorporates finest sounding but still available components & materials that were harmonically matched to a very high degree.
It is worth mentioning that at any performance level, the most effort ends up in the voicing & harmonic matching of the components, which is so decisive about how products are going to sound in the end.

Speaking about voicing & harmonic matching, the R&D of materials & components is an ongoing process that tends to be endless (maybe because I am never 100% satisfied with the sound). The lengthy & costly R&D comes with a great upside as new findings and newly discovered components & materials have a great spill-over effect across all products of SW1X. So all our products benefit from it and keep continuously improving.

I personally lost the sense of time how long it has taken to develop the DACs II & particularly III, where the upcoming Special, Balanced and Signature versions are still in the state of work in progress.

All I can say for now is get ready for the DAC III

S