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RE: Yes, imagine the price if they had to design the DAC inside the fancy box

You should check your history. Accuphase made a discrete 16bit and then later 20bit DAC back in the 1980s. Discrete DAC architecture is nothing new...probably making a resurgence due to lack of chip availability. I own an Ayon Skylla II, which uses the BB PCM1704 (4 of them) and Ayon switched to ESS and later AKM due to lack of availability of 1704s (seems CH has enough but how many $50K dacs get sold per year?).

https://audio-database.com/Accuphase-kensonic/etc/dc-81l.html

After that they switched to chips...the preferred one being the BB PCM63K (the DC91 DAC used like 16 per channel in their MMB configuration). At one time the BB PCM63 was about $70 per chip when Sigma/Deltas were like $2.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/accuphase-dp-90-cd-transport-dc-91-da-processor

The simple fact is this: A laser trimmed R2R IC like the BB PCM-1704 is MUCH higher precision than any discrete ladder DAC can possibly be with macro sized resistors. Same holds true for BB PCM63, AD 1865, TD1541 etc.


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