Why are DAC's so much more expensive than transports?

If you get a full CD player or SACD player, from most manufacturers cost is same or higher for the CD player if the DAC is of equal quality. If the unit is just a transport and is only a tray with digital circuits and one transformer, it should be dramatically less expensive.

The cost in great DACs has little to do with the DAC. It is the output stage. That is what really dictates the quality of a DAC. Great units typically have a dual mono power supply for analog and digital circuits typically are handles separately by a different transformer.  Also, if a unit is fully balanced it effectively doubles the circuitry as well and this adds a lot of cost to lower the noise floor.  .

Analog is where the major deviations occur between cheap dacs and great ones. An ESS, Burr Brown, Wolfson, AKM, Analog Devices, Cirrus Logic chip will all do a competent job of the conversion. It is then the amplification of that signal in the analog output stage that dictates how the dac sounds.

Take Playback Designs. That enormous chassis was so full of stuff for the analog output stage, Andreas had to remove a transformer to make room of the CD tray and servo board for the MPS-8 SACD player and the net impact is that the MPS-8 is a small step down in performance from the MPD-8

Transports are simple to make, just requiring quality components and work. Like any technology, they are becoming commoditized. 

DACs are still evolving.  Lots of development still going on, competing technologies, advances, improvments, excitement.  This is the forumula for high demand.  High demand means higher prices.  

Add to that the smaller production lots of the high end pieces and the customized nature and you get higher prices.  

you order a lampizator (for example), they ask you what options you want, and they build it.  You order a transport and you get a mass produced component prepackaged in a retail box.

Jerry

I am going to be a bit of an outlier here and feather ruffler. I had a friend one time who was a bit on the wealthy side. He had a very good education and a very good business. He traveled extensively. He took a trip to Europe with his wife and she wanted to go to France to have some fine wine and possibly visit the Louvre Museum. So when he got back and we talked about his trip, he said he had a good time but he couldn’t agree with his wife on the excitement and great experience his wife had with the great wine and museum artwork. He told me he does not understand all the fuss about the wine and really could not get the “Mona Lisa”. He told me the painting was not impressive. In that instance I knew how undereducated and shortsighted he was with regard to art and culture. He couldn’t grasp the time, effort, talent it takes to make great wine and didn’t know much Leonardo da Vinci and his overwhelming engineering, creative and artistic talent. So what does this have to do with a DAC? Well I guess it means the companies, engineers and talent that goes into the making of a great sounding DAC would often get overlooked.

@carlsbad2 : I disagree that DAC's are evolving. DAC's have been transparent to the source for decades. They are solved engineering! The expensive prices are money grabs by the greedy. A DAC is essentially the equivalent parts-wise of a computer soundcard. Manufacturing efficiency has driven down prices for soundcards. The same can be said for all the millions of DAC's currently in use in CD/DVD players and streamers. Manufacturers that claim they have some secret circuit design that distinguishes their "audiophile" DAC's from the majority are preying upon the gullibility of the unwary. 

verdantaudio

... if a unit is fully balanced it effectively doubles the circuitry as well and this adds a lot of cost ...

That's a common misnomer. Many truly balanced circuits employ circuits such as differential amplifiers, of which operational amps are an example.