It absolutely so. THD+N and hence SINAD has been around for decades. How come these protests had not come about until we as a site became so popular?
I may be speaking only for myself here, but I expect many if not most ASR participants and readers could not have told you what "SINAD" was before you adopted it as your shorthand figure of merit here. And I don't know about "protests" because I don't really follow that stuff. Electronics are in the main boring to me unless they actually
solve a real problem. The largest fidelity problems to solve in home and personal audio electronics today are, respectively, bass management + modal equalization, and frequency response equalization. These simply tower over any other potential fidelity issue. So, for any integrated product* "how does it address one or both of those?" is just a rephrase of "why should anybody care about this thing?"
*I'm using "integrated product" as shorthand for an audio component designed to fulfill multiple functions, or be the only processing link in the signal chain.
Integrated product examples: integrated amp/AVR/AVP, DAC/headphone amp, wireless speaker, or DAC with a big volume knob on the front
Not integrated products: analog amplifier (e.g. Buckeye or Benchmark), source component (e.g. AppleTV or digital/analog disk-spinner), or 2-channel DAC that makes it hard for someone to touch it screw up your gain structure (e.g. Topping E50).
One can argue either way about a home audio (digital or analog) preamp or wired powered monitor - it's easy enough to add the necessary capability elsewhere in the chain with such products.
Those are not their skillset. You are talking about signal processing and embedded software development. It is way outside of the comfort zone of these and frankly, many audio companies.
Excuses just bore me to tears. Developing "signal processing and embedded software" is
"in the major" of
every single integrated audio electronics designer or manufacturer today. That's where the audible improvements lie. So there's no excuse for them not to develop, or seek out, the talent required to make things that actually solve problems instead of just pumping out the next darling me too pointless who cares whatever with modest improvements in inaudible specifications compared to last product cycle's darling me too pointless who cares whatever. That, simply put, is the job!
Adding such features also makes the product more unique and more expensive and hence potentially smaller volumes. RME ADI-2 DAC is one such product with those characteristics.
I think your "more unique" is my "worth a damn." Also, I think the "more expensive" argument fell out the window like a Russian dissident when Quedlix 5K came onto the market. To my knowledge, neither RME or Quedlix are particularly large companies. Maybe Quedlix has a parent I don't know about? WiiM (maybe a subsidiary of a large company, I don't know) also claims they will add EQ capabilities to their little $100 hockey puck sized streamers.
For that matter, look at miniDSP. They're certainly not a large company. Nor are their products particularly expensive in the scheme of things. They just decided to focus on attacking what matters.
So they do what they are good at which is optimizing electronic performance. Where they need or should do beyond that, is something they need to figure out.
I agree with that. However, I submit that one role of someone who has amassed some influence through his own diligence, commitment, and smarts is to use that influence to guide these companies to skate to where the proverbial puck is going to be rather than where it was.