Digital Improving All the Time?
I hear it here all the time - digital technology is constantly improving…usually being told to someone afraid of buying something that will be obsolete soon. It is true that, with the advent of high-quality Asian products, prices on some excellent digital has come down to the point that one can buy a very nice dac for under 1k and an excellent one for 5k. But I don’t see that the technologies improved over the last 20 years. The Naim 555 and the Vekian and Wadias were astounding products built long ago. Even now, some of the best dacs from Audio Note and Jadis use old chips and the darling ladder dacs are even older technology. Ok, some use the FPGA thing, but that’s basically just a home-rolled chip, which does add a bit more flexibility to the architecture, but that’s about it, IMO. And yes, some companies like DCS and MSB built $100k dacs that I’m sure sound great, but other companies probably could have done the same thing 20 years ago by adding huge power supplies and stuffing them with the most expensive parts and construction quality possible. But they probably didn’t think anyone would buy them. And I’m not talking about streaming and such, because that is relatively young in its development. Streamers may well be improving, but I don’t see dacs as constantly improving, as is so often said. Good day.
@w123ale , I like this "big picture" on dacs by Thomas, he talks about "good enough" vs chasing incremental improvements. Check out the "high end" of the old days vs. "affordable" today:.:
|
I believe that digital in the past years has grown immensely. The coming of age streaming apps and super high speed internet including in mobile areas has made hi res available to all. Cheap DACs that can do most all. Never heard of 3 years ago. DSD, DTS, MLP were all around 20 years ago but the dependence on disc sales and cheap ways to spin made them just for a few. And they were we all in 5.1 back then too. But in surround sound that too was a small market. Having a media room is very common now. So atmos music is now taking off since all the sound bars (yes many have only that) can handle it. Plus all others AVRs but I will still say there is a recent revival in QUALITY 2 channel after the last 15-20 years of overly compressed ear bud revolution. Cheap storage and high bandwidth has changed the landscape along with cheap hardware that can yield decent results for the masses. I for one love it. |
