@RandomEar Yeah a new color for devices above 115, and devices above 120.
Same reason car companies are diehards for old as heck chip nodes. It's gotten so bad that TSMC has said they're not going to be making older chips anymore for companies, and companies will have to move on to using 28nm at worst (keep in mind, you iPhone is running on 5nm chips by comparison, 28nm is basically a decade old now, and shithole car companies with their laggy ass car OS's still want to use chips as old as they can possibly source).
I'm too lazy to check out Mouser, but I think the CL and TI chips for example are to be had for cheaper than AKM and certainly cheaper than ESS. But I think it simply has to do with not having to hire a whole new team to learn how to implement things properly from a totally different manufacturer (and possibly because they get great deals from other manufacturers).
As for why companies don't do this in the AVR space, that's because most of the budget goes elsewhere (consumer DACs get absolutely obliterated by the DSP capabilities, and the I/O options AVR's come with, it's so bad in fact, whenever I see a DAC that has dual TOSLINK inputs, I call that a miracle, and then it gets quickly dashed because it's on a multi kilobuck device which I don't care about). AVR makers also don't take their customers to be a userbase that cares enough to educate themselves beyond brand hype and market penetration (and beyond subjective reviews online). And the last reason they don't change if they even know what a SINAD number even is - is because they don't think there's an audible difference worth considering. They're all in the same AVR industry, and all probably get pooled into a handful of manufacturers providing parts for them at a favorable price. Desktop DACs on the other hand, seemingly will NEVER have things like HDMI audio routing support, or any of the multitude of licensed tech AVRs must support.
As much as I take car tech progress to be a joke, I still have to understand that you're not going to be able to get the price Apple gets for their chips. In 2020, there were I think less than 15 million car sales in America. That's for the entire industry... Apple on the other hand, sells more than that many units per quarter.