"The problem with the W4S are the proprietary drivers needed to run on the source machine vs. the native OS drivers used by Ayre/Wavelength.
Changes in operating system framework may require these drivers to be updated which could become problematic."
I personally wouldn't really consider this a "problem." You could say the same thing about device that a computer uses which requires drivers. Every single PCI/PCIe sound card, graphics card, network chip, ... all fall into this category.
Sound related OS updates that require driver updates for a dac are going to occur few and far between, if at all, and if/when they do happen, assuming W4S is still around, it would be pretty safe to assume that they will be able to update their drivers.
Changes in operating system framework may require these drivers to be updated which could become problematic."
I personally wouldn't really consider this a "problem." You could say the same thing about device that a computer uses which requires drivers. Every single PCI/PCIe sound card, graphics card, network chip, ... all fall into this category.
Sound related OS updates that require driver updates for a dac are going to occur few and far between, if at all, and if/when they do happen, assuming W4S is still around, it would be pretty safe to assume that they will be able to update their drivers.