DACs are of course the bane of digital audio.
The residual distortion and dither they cause may be reduced to close to nil, but never to nil.
For sensible people, their expected life must be inversely proportional to the cost price.
Perhaps a table can be derived:
$100 6 months
$500 1 year
$2,000 3 years
$5,000 10 years
$20,000 30 years
$50,000 100 years
The diminishing returns can be seen. In any case, no sensible person will spend $20,000 on a DAC as it will be superseded in a few years.
This causes me to wonder. Are DACS the fastest depreciating hi-fi component? Will they depreciate more slowly as their technology becomes more mature?
The residual distortion and dither they cause may be reduced to close to nil, but never to nil.
For sensible people, their expected life must be inversely proportional to the cost price.
Perhaps a table can be derived:
$100 6 months
$500 1 year
$2,000 3 years
$5,000 10 years
$20,000 30 years
$50,000 100 years
The diminishing returns can be seen. In any case, no sensible person will spend $20,000 on a DAC as it will be superseded in a few years.
This causes me to wonder. Are DACS the fastest depreciating hi-fi component? Will they depreciate more slowly as their technology becomes more mature?