If our ears can’t detect differences at this point, then isn’t SMSL selling a bit of snake oil by adding an extra ES9038pro in this box and charging an extra $200 for something extraneous?
Hold on. Let's stop after the first comma: at this point?
Reality check: audibly transparent conversion under normal usage has been reached many years ago and is available for a few dollars nowadays.
If there had been audible differences up to this point then we could have relied on (blind) listening tests instead of measurements all along and those listening tests would have all cross-confirmed the measurements. There also would not be such a divide between scientifically minded and subjectivist audiophiles.
How is selling something that is advertised to measure better (and does so) at a premium snake oil, regardless of the fact that there are no audible differences?
Unless the manufacturer makes the claim that under normal listening conditions there are actually audible differences, I don't see how it would be.
And if our existing limits of sampling rates already exceed our ability to discern the difference between analog masters and their digital facsimiles, then what’s the future of digital audio? What frontier haven’t we crossed?
Sampling rates and bit depth never were an issue. The loudness war (which could have been ended decades ago with a simple solution), bad recording, bad mixing, bad mastering and bad musicians/singers are.
While 48/96 kHz do have some advantages, the industry obviously pushed "HD audio" to be able to resell you "HD ready" components and "HD music".
Currently, 13/17 bit lossy MQA that doesn't even compress better than lossless codecs at equivalent bit depth is being pushed, so that manufacturers can resell you "MQA ready" components and services/labels can resell you the same songs in a mangled form. And people fall for it, happily pay the extra fee.
What will the future be? Are you asking for something that actually makes a difference like object-based audio or the next MQA scam?