What's the point of a sound card?

[Joe B]

That's a good point, Joe. (Evolutionary vs revolutionary). Revolutionary change would be from analog to digital. PCM to DSD seems more evolutionary because it is based on digital technology, which is the real revolutionary piece. Agree/disagree?
Disagree. Going from PCM to DSD, from what I've read, was no small matter for the engineers involved. Certainly analog to digital was revolutionary, but so was PCM to DSD.

I acknowledge your point about people sticking to old tech. The only potential flaw in this is that if the digital formatting changes in a streaming environment, people will have no choice but to replace their DACs.
I did not suggest people stick to old tech. I stated that nothing new was going to happen in the next 1-3 years (time frame given by you) that would necessitate exchanging gear.

I wish this wouldn't be the case, but there are things that could happen relatively quickly. I believe that the vast majority of DACs are still hardware defined. Perhaps software defined DACs is the next evolutionary step? If it is, then such a change would represent a pretty significant change (maybe not revolutionary, but a high order evolutionary change),

(Note: We've seen a transition from hardware to software defined tech in radio and radar communications. The transition has been happening for some time now. If it hasn't already done so, it will overtake and completely displace hardware driven devices.

I can see this happening to DACs, as it is a way to better future proof devices and shift marketing further towards the far more profitable pay-to-subscribe or pay-to-upgrade models.

The underlying technologies are in place for this to happen: Streaming services, almost ubiquitous access to high speed IP services, cheaper processing power, automated billing, societal acceptance of technical penetration into home and property, etc.)

It would seem that our planning horizons are different. I see 1-3 years as a typical product cycle... and 10-20 years as a reasonable contemporary technology cycle. Obviously, the tech cycle is much harder to gauge accurately because of technological compression (historically, tech cycles were much longer but have been decreasing during the Information Age).

If this holds, then DACs as we currently know them could be reaching the end of their life cycle. While this is not a given, I think that we could at least agree that the current DACs on the market will not have the technological lifespan of, say, the record player because the latter is an example of technological stagnation whereas digital continues to move forward.

This is far-out thinking, to be sure. But it does touch on issues that audioholics may face as technology makes a greater impact on our hobby. It also has a way of shaping the way we manage risk.

I can think of several truly excellent DACs that cost $1k and up. I can't imagine buying them because technology is changing so fast that their features and performance characteristics will be available for hundreds of dollars within the next 24 months. This is something that I cannot say, with any confidence, about amps or loudspeakers.
I purchased my current DAC 4 years after its initial release. I did this because nothing significantly new happened since its release to make me look elsewhere for the performance I was after. Are you using a crystal ball here? Can you back this up?

So I'm not ready to say that the last leap in DACs has already taken place. I think we may be at half time of the football game. Caution is warranted, perhaps not enough to stop one from buying a DAC but certainly enough not to spend the kind of money on a cutting edge "DAC for life" (or the next 20 years, whatever comes sooner).
I don't see it. I'm not suggesting that the tech is not evolving, but until the audio industry starts using tech that doesn't concurrently exist at home, I don't think I've got a thing t worry about (384/32 PCM, 11.2DSD, etc. many home products are beyond the tech being used to record).

 

[GrimSurfer]

I certainly don't have a crystal ball... suppose that's why I'm reluctant to say that the tech is mature.

The shift from PCM to DSD has been relatively recent. If it was (as you suggest) revolutionary, then it might be a bit early to call the technology mature... we still might see some significant improvements to come.

So much audio tech is hardware based. That's because the older guys running the audio business started out as analog engineers. It's difficult to say, exactly what's going to happen when this generation no longer controls the industry.

We've seen a gradual trend away from hardware, in the conventional sense. A great many companies design, but don't actually build, components. As people with a greater software mindset enter the business, we may see a radical shift.

Some evidence of this already exists. Audio correction started out as hardware. That hardware was improved upon. Today, however, advanced and "pro" audio correction is software driven -- it no longer resides in a piece of audio gear but on a laptop.

I can see a time in the very near future where digital audio and digital computing truly merge. ATT, devices are communicating but a full merger would involve dynamic hand-off. Imagine room correction that constantly changes as people (big sacks of sound absorbing matter) move around, curtains are drawn, temperature changes etc.

This has happened in military technologies, where older gear like antennae and receiver/transmitters started being controlled by computers to increase performance by noise shaping, attenuation, etc. That was last-gen stuff. The new gear (dating back about ten years now) consists of integrated hardware and software.

Now this doesn't have any direct connection to DACs, but it is a concrete example of how a particular bit of technology has changed, and may well change again, because of the fully exploitation of the digital domain.

So we've seen hints of this in audio already (room correction software and firmware). We'll likely see more when some whiz kid is able to convince "the board" that they can derive greater performance from extant hardware designs by going the next step in the digitization process.

This sort of tech has a way of trickling down... and laterally to other devices. It takes time, but not as long as it used to.