I'll again make my point. Dacs today, note I am saying today, sound very nice on the whole and extremely nice in specific circumstances. The C50 and the C2500 BOTH come with a decent dac, built in, for basically no extra charge. Now then, lets say 5 years from now, you can always add a new external dac if you believe the additional sound quality is evident to your ears. The internal dacs on todays Macs are actually pretty decent and I've had some pretty good ones come through my system through the years. The Macs are not bleeding edge mind you but I find the one in my Mac very nice and I look at is as a nice casual listening dac, especially when you think about always having a reasonable sounding dac with an excellent power supply/output stage implementation.
All due respect but the c2200 and its depreciation curve has little to do with the dac implementation of the c50 or the c2500. I've had a c2200, it was a great pre. The c2300 was better, quieter and had a much better phono stage. The c2500 is better still with a free dac. People act like dacs introduced tomorrow will be revolutionary when compared to dacs today. While change is inevitable and ususally for the better, it is not always so clear cut as some expouse. I heard a 20 plus year old Levinson 30.6 dac recently that was still amazing. Horses for courses. For many, a reasonably priced dac today may be all they ever need and Mac waited to integrate one until the addition of a reasonably priced built in dac met their standards for inclusion. Are they the best Mac is capable of producing? Of course not. They build other products to fill that need.
Please do your research and listen for yourself. The C50 and the C2500 I believe have different dacs and different implementations so check for yourself.
