Msb dacs why not alot of postings

$$$$

i am now of the belief that in the last couple years the outboard DAC offerings have advanced substantially in terms of trickle-down performance benefits into lower cost units

this really shifts the point of diminishing returns / value curve to the benefit of more affordable units

like everything else in hifi (turntables, cartridges, amps, speakers...), more expensive is often still better, but just as often, it is just different, or only ever so slightly better, however better may be defined

just soooo many truly excellent dacs that are hard to better in the $1000-1500 range now - those who have any interest in value for money would be best served to put $$ into other parts of the chain over this price tier of DACs imho

ignorance is at the heart of bliss 

life in the bubble continues for some

really expensive stuff getting less interest makes all the sense in the world, especially when the pricing is out of reach of most that might be interested - whether the item is better or not is only of tangential relevance

smaller audience deeming relevant to them

shdn't be any surprise or amazement

more people discuss porsches than bugattis

this thread took a whole 24 hours to devolve into nonsense

life is short... let’s spend more time being ugly and arguing with nameless strangers we couldn’t care less about

in any product development there are two important frontiers

1 - at any cost, advance performance, define state of the art
2 - bring excellent performance to more users at a price many users can easily afford

for those of us who enjoy this hobby, we also want to know the absolute performance gap between 1 and 2, then we calibrate and decide what we want to buy on the value vs performance curve

for me personally - i cannot and do not speak for anyone else - i think 1500-2000 bucks for a dac is a sweet spot - really excellent sound can be gotten, rivaling excellent analog systems (which i also fortunate to have) - i have tried many dacs now, some quite expensive ones well above this price tier, thus the basis for my belief

i could spend 10x that amount, affordability is not an issue, but for me, i would rather save the money, spend it on something else, and/or give to charities i support - no we can’t take the money with us when we pass, but even so, i would rather use the money for other things to improve my life and other peoples lives in ways that have more meaning and impact

@nitewulf

pertaining to the aspect of your post regarding audiophile preferences for point to point wired components versus those that are pcb based... as an analog for a potential preference for discrete r2r dacs using physical resistors vs silicon-based r2r dac chips...

it really isn’t a hard choice... with ’modern’ (even from 15-20 years ago) chipmaking techniques using photolithography, ion doping, physical/chemical vapor deposition and so forth, it is certainly true that silicon-based versions are not only successfully miniaturized, but also made to significantly tighter tolerances than using physical (discrete) resistors ... this is essential for most and least significant bit representations during D/A conversion using the such ladder networks, especially as one moves into calcs beyond 16-18-20 bits to real 24 bit conversions - physical resistors just aren’t precise enough...

so just like small makers of phone and linestages may use kits and point to point wiring (and audiophiles may desire this for romantic reasons), anyone who works at scale and understands proper modern design and manufacturing engineering to meaningful QC and proper tolerances will adopt the more effective and efficient ways to get it done

the fact that r2r chips from the heyday of such as the td1545a, ad1782 or bb pcm63 are not made today is not because they perform worse, it is because of demand for such chips have declined with the advent of low cost DS chips that do the same work for less and incorporate more related functionality like dsp...