Never had an opportunity to try Soekris, but know a fair amount about Katana. It is of course an RPi dac, so works for a music player, maybe not so good if you wanted to watch a DVD of a live concert and listen to it in sync with the picture. However, as Sabre dacs go, Katana can be one of the better (or maybe even best) sounding ones, and can compete on sound quality with dacs costing maybe up to around $1,500, if and only if it has the right power supply. With the basic power supply scheme of two or three 5v wall wart supplies, Katana is not all that great, IMHO. Choosing the 'thd' output stage and buying the optional 'isolator' board, can also help Katana to produce the best sound quality. I was able to find a fairly low cost linear power supply solution that made Katana sound pretty much as good as an ES9038Q2M dac can sound, period (without going to external interpolation filtering using an FPGA).
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Don't know about a price comparison. If cost is a big issue, Abraxalito has a low cost dac design that he says he thinks sounds as good as dacs costing hundreds of dollars. The are un-assembled, but he said boards and parts enough to make 10 of the dacs would cost about $50, which is the minimum he would be willing to ship. He said other people who buy 10 boards might be willing to sell one to other people who only want one. Maybe some more info on that over in the following thread: https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/dig...-rbcd-multibit-dac-design-18.html#post5655530
Regarding my power supply for Katana, I will include a pic below. It started with a kit linear power supply that can output +-15v rails and a +5v rail. The power supply kits can be bought for as little as around $70. Mine was modified a little in that the rectifiers were replaced with hexfreds and the LM317 for +15v was replaced with an LT1083. What kind of does the magic to make Katana sound its best is some film caps in parallel with each other attached from the +-15v rails to ground. For each rail there are 10+10+22+33+33 (all values in uf) of Wima mks4 series 63v film caps soldered in parallel. That is the red block in the lower left corner of the pic below. The +5 linear supply output rail powers the Katana stack digital needs. In addition, there was a +5v IFI wall wart supply used to power RPi (don't think it needed to be IFI brand in particular).
Regarding my power supply for Katana, I will include a pic below. It started with a kit linear power supply that can output +-15v rails and a +5v rail. The power supply kits can be bought for as little as around $70. Mine was modified a little in that the rectifiers were replaced with hexfreds and the LM317 for +15v was replaced with an LT1083. What kind of does the magic to make Katana sound its best is some film caps in parallel with each other attached from the +-15v rails to ground. For each rail there are 10+10+22+33+33 (all values in uf) of Wima mks4 series 63v film caps soldered in parallel. That is the red block in the lower left corner of the pic below. The +5 linear supply output rail powers the Katana stack digital needs. In addition, there was a +5v IFI wall wart supply used to power RPi (don't think it needed to be IFI brand in particular).
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