AKM makes the best DACs

I would recomend listening to somethiFROM, MSB, dCS, or Chord before saying the AKM is the best. I still own an SP1000 with the AKM 4497eq chip but it is bested by my Bartok, MSB discrete or Chord TT2 and Dave. 

Thanks for posting the links. They say they are "preparing to resume the shipment of samples in 2022. ... Details will be announced in January of 2022."

To me, samples means small quantities.

Then, later in the article: "As audioXpress also learned, all the above mentioned AKM chips, including the AK4462, AK4498, AK4499 and AK4336 references are no longer in production. Asahi Kasei Microdevices intends to confirm a new generation of products starting in January 2022."

That sounds like redesign work for audio manufacturers who have been using the previous generation of chips.

I bought a DAC in late 2020 that debuted back in 2010 with an AKM DAC chip. Better than anything else overall that I’ve heard. So much so that I’ve since unhesitatingly retired all thoughts of ever looking for anything that sounds better...my own, personal endgame DAC.

I must admit that I was not expecting that from an AKM chip per se, but it was a pleasant surprise.

To be clear, I was specifically asking about ...

For converters which use an all in one chip ...

Perhaps someone should start a separate thread for DACs which use only in house electronics for the converter.

I love my Bryston DAC, which uses an AKM chip, but didn't the AKM factory burn down about a year ago?