Trell
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- Joined
- May 13, 2021
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When you put the price in the equation it’s difficult to argue. However, it’s difficult argue the value of the price in so many ways to start with that having to replace the caps in 5-6yrs is neither here nor there.
We can see that the manufacturer quasi admits the issue by replacing them free of charge.
BTW, what do you expect a consumer audio devices life time to be?
All manufacturers, in whatever industry, have devices that fails for various reasons and not necessarily their fault at all. Failures will occur with some devices, though, so here service and support is of course very important: The more expensive the device the more this becomes important, at least to me.
That said, there are also design errors (which can be very hard or impossible to fix) and this Chord DAC appears to have at least one due to lack of proper heat management (poor cooling). This is a newbie error.
As for how long an audio product should last, even consumer ones? At least a decade for electronics, and that has generally has been my experience. For me earlier device retirements is typically due to progress in technology and not failure. With current AVRs? My current one is a 2015 model Denon in daily use but then I've put Noctua fans on top of it for cooling.