Update on my Emotiva Stealth DC-1, I sent it back to Emotiva near the end of its warranty because it won't stay powered on. It came back and just continued shutting itself off. What a letdown. I placed a good PC quiet fan directly on it to test it for a few hours -- to no avail, while running cool, the unit still shuts itself down. Whatever Emotiva did, it didn't work. Honestly, for a $500 DAC that worked for almost 5 years, I can justify throwing it away rather than continuing with a shipping runaround, plus the inevitable failure of communication when you get something fritzy like "sometimes works, no rhyme or reason why it shuts itself down."
I'm running RME units now, and I am hopeful that they will do better over the long haul.
What this site suggests to me is that because because manufacturers have not been checked for years, they're selling marginal products and just rolling along with marketing to create a mystique or else just telling falsehoods when they puff about their quality. Handling units like RME and Benchmark shows what is possible, and while expensive, I think they are worth what you pay for them. I've never been owned or handled anything like a David Rowland or Krell or whatever -- I have never even known someone who knows someone who owns such products -- but for solid products within an ordinary person's range, this site shows that there are some marvelous products along with the smelly turds.
