Well, someone like the mother, someone like the daughter...
ESS9018 is a little bit older now, and very soon it will come out on marked the successor of it, ESS9038Pro, which for sure, and by far it will subclass the AKM4490. Of course the price of the chip is a very raw appreciation when to compare these two DACs, or whatever devices. However it may be something there, that one it is priced for 5$ each (for 100 pcs the price is even lower), and another chip is to be found on marked quite difficult, not to find it at biggest components retailers either, and for a price 10 times higher (each), at only few authorised retailers. For a mass production the Sabre chip it may cost much lower, but I seriously doubt it may come down to the same price as for AKM4490.
Else, a little bit more serious appreciation is to have a look at the way of these DACs are designed. Ess9018 it include actually (if I remember well) 128 individual DAC circuits, as the base for the DAC chip concept. Then are many other stages inside that chip (in between the jitter correction circuits, advanced digital volume), as also unknown stages, which it make this DAC as the most complex designed so far. AKM4490 is for sure not so elaborated as the Sabre, and this is enough obvious reflected in its production price. However, ESS9018 it have higher dynamic figures than AKM4490. ESS9038Pro it have (as stated so far) 140dB dynamic range, which is indeed exceptional and not to be found to other DAC producers.
When about the "musicality" of one or another DAC chip, this it is in very close relation with the additional components around the DAC chip itself, which are crucial for the musical signature of the whole system. Peoples compare the "musicality" of one or another chip, in the systems they are included/implemented, and this is far from the right way to do a right appreciation of a DAC chip capabilities. If one audio device manufacturer add in his DAC design a cap more than another designer, in a special place in the analogue signal path, or it treat the digital signals in a particular way, then the resulting products it will sound quite different, even thought with the same DAC inside. This way of appreciating "musicality" is far from the right way to judge a DAC chip or another. The same audio system it should have different DAC chips to make in principle possible a comparative appreciation of a DAC chip "musicality". But such approach is almost impossible, as two different DAC chips, it need around different components/designs to sounds right... So, to conclude, the assertion: "one DAC chip is more or less "musical " than another", is a very wrong comparative idea. The musicality of an audio device is decided by the rest of the components used together with the DAC chip.
I have experimented a lot with PCM 1793/4, and I corrected at maximum the adjacent approaches used together with this old DAC chip. The result is that a DAC system based on PCM1793/4 it sound as better (perceptual appreciation) as an ESS9018 based one, while PCM1794 is an old and simple design, and ESS9018 is the most advanced one. So, please belive me, the "musicality" is not the right criteria to appreciate which of the DAC chips it may be the best/better one, but only a way to overall appreciate the device that DAC chip is implemented into....
