I see a day when expensive dacs are a thing of the past. With digital music becoming more popular and the designs of dacs becoming more common among most peoples systems in order for music for digital players like portable players, or computers I will think that dacs will come down in price to a point where almost anyone could afford one if one wants. If you look inside a Dac the circuit designs are rather simple mostly consisting of chip sets made by Ti, or Burr Brown or Cirrus and put together with good quality op amps and power supplies that don't have to be huge to power these circuits even though some brands insist on big power supplies for quality and balanced power. I think we will see a day when dacs as good as separate ones are common to be incorporated in preamps and receivers or prepro's as a common feature because digital music is not going anywhere and the quality of digital music is just getting better and more defined as the bit rates get higher and sampling rates get higher we will see some awesome quality come out of digital in the future and I think dacs will be more commonplace and the price per quality will only get lower.