Why Don't We See More Affordable/Great Sounding DAC/Preamps?

Lately we've seen some excellent affordable DACs out there (tube,DSD) etc but there are VERY few affordable, great DAC/Preamps for say under $2500.Why is this so? I would love a great bare bones tube DAC with an analog volume control with just one or two imputs and two sets of unbalanced outputs.WITHOUT spending $6k like the excellent Ear-Yoshino one.

 

Oppo HA-1:

https://www.oppodigital.com/headphone-amplifier-ha-1/

Not tube, but runs in Class A.

 

Darn good question, especially inasmuch as there appear to be few answers.

 

Analog volume control is the kicker. There are many with digital volume controls. But I think that there are more than a few that will fit your needs, if you look hard enough. I haven't been in the market for this but...

 

My Fulla has a analog volume control. All for the princely sum of 79 bucks.

 

Probably because DACs are really not that complicated, and, as with all things audio these days, it's easier to create perceived value by charging a lot for them.

If you've ever read the instruction sheet for common DAC ICs from the likes of Burr Brown, Cirrus Logic or Analog Devices, you will find that the engineers who designed them also suggest some surrounding circuitry for them that can be implemented relatively inexpensively, and to good effect (those IC engineers kinda know what they are doing). There's not a lot of huge mystery to this process, so the audio industry likes to try to prove otherwise, and make a whole lot of money in the process.

This is part of a whole sad state of affairs in the audio industry today, unfortunately.

 

Teac, Cambridge, Audiolab and Musical Fidelity to name but four all have a number of great options for less than £1000. Plenty of choice there.

 

Parasound P5 is an awesome value @ $1100.00
edit- sorry I did not read your requirements.

 

One of the problems with adding an analog volume control to a DAC is that it typically requires an extra amp stage to work best, not to mention that a good volume control can get pretty expensive (if you've ever compared a typical volume control to a good resistor divider, you'd probably be shocked to hear how much is lost). In any case, some of the high end designers are probably reluctant to add that extra cost and extra amp stage to their products, since most wouldn't use it (the DAC as a source component really isn't the ideal location for the volume control because of that added circuitry needed to adequately drive the cable and the input of the next component).

 

THIS has an analog volume control, and the tech info page devotes a lot of space explaining that once the signal leaves the DAC chip, the signal path is pure analog and fully balanced.

$1,199--under budget, too.

 

If I was slightly more into headphones I'd have this Quad PA-One.

 

The newer McIntosh DACs fit all the criteria including analog volume control, and can be commonly found on ebay for ~$1700.

 

Apologies, I didn't pick up on the requirement for a tube DAC specifically.