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

Good question , prices are out of control.   Answer ?   Because they can.   

Great Question.

I recently bought a Wiim Pro for $100.  It’s intended for my basement HT system, which had been Physical Media only.  It sounds great.  I moved it to the big two channel rig and an experiment running it into same Bryston DAC as my CA CXN 100 streamer .  The difference between the two transports is quite small sonically.

  I am tempted to say that it must be relatively cheap to build a good streamer.  These are just networking computers in audio casework.  Networking Computers are incredibly ubiquitous.  There must be billions of them in use on the planet.  Presumably the essential parts must be driven to the floor price wise.  Now we all know that computers are noisy.  However eliminating some of the noise making functions of a PC, such as email and texting and all video functions, separation of some of the other functions from each other, perhaps some separate power supplies, and you end up with something that sounds a lot better than a bog standard PC.

  DACs on the other hand might be more expensive.  Audiophile grade DACs are much less ubiquitous than networking computers.  The best chips are not cheap compared to something like Dell Computers might use in a laptop.  The parts needed to synchronize the timing, so critical in music reproduction (compared to what is needed for a home printer, for example), have a cost.  Power supplies also have a cost for quality.  And then there is the issue of inputs, particularly if a DAC is accommodating some something like IS2 

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