What is the average life expectancy of a DAC?
DACs are of course the bane of digital audio. The residual distortion and dither they cause may be reduced to close to nil, but never to nil. For sensible people, their expected life must be inversely proportional to the cost price. Perhaps a table can be derived: $100 6 months $500 1 year $2,000 3 years $5,000 10 years $20,000 30 years $50,000 100 years The diminishing returns can be seen. In any case, no sensible person will spend $20,000 on a DAC as it will be superseded in a few years. This causes me to wonder. Are DACS the fastest depreciating hi-fi component? Will they depreciate more slowly as their technology becomes more mature? |
@aamiransari 1st, I commend you for asking a good question! Some of the questions in this forum are, well, let’s say interesting. And sometimes the comments are unhelpful. I appreciated several of the responses to your question. 2nd, I’m not an expert nor an audio engineer. 3rd, I have done a lot of research and have spent substantial $$ on both a headphone system (amps & DACs and MQA) and a stereo system (McIntosh, high end speakers...). I read countless reviews, watched innumerable youtube reviews, and focused on so-called top-rated DACs. I have purchased and A-B tested several. I ended up settling on the NAD C658 (around $1600) and the Topping D90 MQA (around $800) for my headphone set up (Sennheisers, Focals, and Shure 846s). In my experience the past year +, I’ve concluded at the rate of DAC entries, they will be an evolving tech (clock rates, chipsets, MQA or not, other enhancements yet to come). At some level, $500 - $1500 may not be that big of a price tag for a component that you may enjoy for 3-5 years. More specifically, are you a person who enjoys the audiophile hobby and looks to upgrade items over time? 4th, one factor that I settled on (and this, too, is debated. Heck, everything in the audiophile world is debated!) was balanced connections. I wanted XLR balanced connections and that narrows the field some. Last, I was seriously tempted to buy the Holo-May DAC until I watch Zeos’ review. It was at once good and also hysterical. Some of the comments to Zeos’ review were spot on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOqgEJVvld0&t=1966s As always, the proof is in your listening experience / enjoyment. Hope you find what you want! |
