Microchip MCP4921 12-bit SPI DAC

MCP4921 is a single channel, 12-bit DAC with an external voltage reference and SPI interface. It offers high accuracy and low power consumption in a prototype-friendly DIP-8 package.

After trying a number of different ICs, this is now my weapon of choice if I need to use an external DAC (eg. for MIDI to CV conversion) - it offers 12-bit resolution, uses the SPI serial interface (requires 3 pins - clock, data and chip select) and has good library support.

Better still, it is available in a through-hole package whereas a lot of other higher resolution DACs are only available in SMD.
 

The datasheet can be found here: https://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/en/MCP4921

There are a number of libraries available for the Arduino. The one that I generally use can be found here: https://github.com/michd/Arduino-MCP492X (there are a number of different libraries available - a search for 'MCP4921 Arduino' will generally pull them up)