Wow, I had no idea that had happened. I own an RME DAC and was recently pricing out a small system for a friend when I discovered that the price for the ADI-2 has gone up by about $350 since I bought mine (right around the time when they silently switched DAC chips). Had attributed it to the prevailing logistics and microchip production problems/shortages, but only just now learned they actually mfg. theirs in Japan. Hopefully they get back up and running quickly.Update from Asahi Kasei Microdevices - The Return of Velvet Sound
Following the major fire that destroyed its semiconductor factory in Japan, Asahi Kasei Microdevices (AKM) is back online and promises new announcements in January 2022. audioXpress received notice from Gaku Suzuki, General Manager for Digital Marketing HiFi ICs at AKM that the company's famed...audioxpress.com
Looks like no flagship parts any time soon, but their mainstream AK4490, AK4493 and multichannel AK445x should reappear at least.
Heh. At the time of the fire, I predicted that it could easily be a year before they're back up. And here we are. It really is about time... if you have looked at parts distributors lately you will have noticed how many Cirrus Logic parts are listed with lead times of half a year, a full year, or even more. The market for mainstream audio converters is pretty screwed-up.
AKM's table of DAC products is currently looking like this:
Audio D/A Converters | Audio Components | Products | Asahi Kasei Microdevices (AKM)
AKM’s audio D/A converters (DACs) provide solutions for high quality audio system with the original digital-analog mixing technology.www.akm.com
Looks like no flagship parts any time soon, but their mainstream AK4490, AK4493 and multichannel AK445x should reappear at least.
You can try this one now: https://shenzhenaudio.com/products/...khz-32-bit-dsd512-decoder-with-remote-control
Well it didn’t prevent RME from making a rather seamless switch.
I get only errors from those links:
There’s a thread that discusses this. You can do a forum search on ‘redirection’ to find it if you can’t follow this link either. Hope this helps.
Don’t know. But at least they had the choice to switch to ESS.
They’re gonna continue producing their SOTA DAC with either AKM or ESS. That would be my guess.
