Is it an issue with not wanting to pay Apple for the ability to directly do it or is it a musicality issue? I'm tempted with the Dave but at the same time don't want to spend that kind of money if everyting is going to change in a few months. Any thoughts?
This issue was discussed in the Mojo thread, recently:
www.head-fi.org/t/784602/chord-mojo-the-official-thread-read-the-third-post-for-updated-info/1710#post_12016629
AFAIAA, Apple have zero significant track record in advancing the state of digital audio formats. AFAIAA, they also have zero significant track record in putting sound quality first&foremost in the design of ANY of their recent hardware products. And, since Jobs' passing, I haven't witnessed any substantial industry-leading innovation in
any of their products (gimmicky wrist watches don't count).
They are all about grabbing as much market share as possible, mostly using a
"look at the shiney-shiney!" approach, coupled with a closed ecosystem, and
keeping customers locked into product co-dependency, draconian control, and forced obsolescence.
I do believe Apple have the
potential to produce a very decent DAP (and,
conceivably, even venturing into a desktop headphone DAC-Amp &/or a hi-fi seperates streamer device), but I don't believe the bean-counters on the board of directors will be
motivated to best serve the needs of audiophiles, overall, judging by their self-serving track record, over the past couple of decades.
It is worth pondering why Apple would be motivated to create a higher-res codec than the already-unnecessary and redundant ALAC, at all. One may be reasonably certain that whatever new codec they might bring to market will probably be tightly-integrated with iTunes, as part of a reluctant, and sorely-overdue push to bring iTunes up to date with the rest of the music industry, and thus likely DRM'd, so as to serve Apple's own interests.
I am curious why would you choose products based on wishing to be compatible with Apple's selfish shenanigans?
Far better to free yourself from that dog-&-pony nonsense, and instead buy open-standard products from companies that don't selfishly try to hamstring you at every opportunity (incompatibility, forced-obsolescence, etc.)
And I say all this as someone who has owned (still owns) an obsolete Powerbook, and a broken iPod Classic (gave my other one away to someone, for spares), so I have been an Apple customer, myself.
If I had the spare cash, I'd buy a DAVE DAC in a heartbeat, knowing there are hundreds of different products, from many wonderful designers, engineers, and companies, I could successfully feed it a digital signal with.
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