High resolution digital is dead. The best DAC's killed it.


Something that came as a surprise to me is how good DAC's have gotten over the past 5-10 years.

Before then, there was a consistent, marked improvement going from Redbook (44.1/16) to 96/24 or higher.

The modern DAC, the best of them, no longer do this. The Redbook playback is so good high resolution is almost not needed. Anyone else notice this?
erik_squires
Just a point of perspective; I am old enough to remember that Phillips invented digital audio and proposed a joint venture with Sony to stop competitive standard conflicts. Phillips' proposed standard was PCM, with 21 bit resolution.  This came out as an LP sized CD. The head of Sony insisted that the product had to be reduced in size so as to allow for portability: hence the Sony Walkman.  This meant that resolution had to be lowered down to 16 bits and the current Red-book standard came from this limitation. I would personally like to see a new upgraded standard for digital recording and thus, digital play, so long as it is backwardly compatible. Look at what this philosophy has done for PCs over the last 25 years! 
Lastly, I think that most of the observations ahead of my comment are pretty astute, I just thought that I would broaden the scope a little on how we got here and how we might continue to improve the reproduction of music.

assetmgrsc
... I am old enough to remember that Phillips invented digital audio ...
Denon was recording digital audio back the the '70s, years before Phillips.

I agree Digital has improved so much and is constantly improving. Gone are those days paying 50K for a DCS or MSB DAC to attain sonic nirvana, Dacs priced modestly under 20Ks are leading the game.
@phantom_av 
 
Even $400 and below are now transparent. Well, the caveat is transparent when masked with music, like THD at 10kHz needs to be like -40dB to be audible, but even -50dB would be audible when using a sine wave. 
Apparently nearly 2500 requests for just 300 units......

Yes, it reached it's 300 orders very quick, a mate bought 3 of them, they were supposed to be delivered this month but got delayed a month. They look to be the bargain of the century.

Cheers George