There is no way I would voluntarily use an ESS component in a design, performance be damned. I see no reason to use anything other than TI DAC and ADC chips for normal audio applications. They perform well enough with some margin, documentation is excellent, and support is available should you need it.
For "normal" applications, that makes sense. The thing that doesn't, is an assumption that audiophiles are. Now of course, I've not really heard of any audiophiles that are looking to complete their holy stacks with ADC duties (at best, those would be the minority of people who digitize their vinyl collections or something, but we all know you don't need crazy performance for that either).
I have seen people on Youtube (and I assume in the music business) who like to outfit their recording setups with really good performing gear (performance here being a mix of the sort of performance testing we do here, but also equally as primary, the latency figure). Also, with the amount of PC gaming and internet audio communication going on, it's almost detestable to hear someone with garbage quality audio these days.
The nice thing about going something like the ESS route, is it perhaps demonstrates a sort of attention level the designer is paying. They're willing to put up with this garbage executive or corporate policy of a company, with horrible hardware documentation that is guarded for no sane reason. To then put out a product that performs better than most, is the sort of commendable thing people appreciate over someone doing the same old, drag & drop of an off the shelf T.I. or AKM ADC chip that not many folks find to be interesting if the product is trying to fill some other role outside of basic interfaces.
Now as I said, most people interested in home interfaces, are mainly taking manufacturer specs for their word, and just simply considering latency primarily for live feeds to do things like streaming and such. But when you're doing something a little bit funky in terms of form factor and function like IVX is here with his Cosmos product, it's pretty cool seeing someone go this route and still sticking to his performance focused designs even for an ADC, when one would assume that because audiophiles don't really exist in the ADC realm; it would have been more presumed he would have gone the T.I. or AKM route.
So yeah, I agree, I don't know why someone would use ESS for anything normal. But I appreciate some variety of product offerings if we're not going to be seeing a bog standard "normal" product.
Am I making any sense here?
