First, it must be understood that
every digital audio device that outputs sound that you can hear (even if it has to be amplified first) contains a DAC --- a
Digital to
Analogue
Converter.
Your portable media player has one. Your incredibly expensive CD player has one.
That example leads to the next point. As with many things,
All DACs are not born equal.
I don't know much about audio from phones. Some are said to produce very high quality audio when used as portable music devices. I can say that my phone does not, but then, a Motorola Defy+ is less than half the price of some of the smart phones on the market. Do the phones from Sony that carry the Walkman tag live up to that in terms of sound quality? The iPhone is so hyped that it probably exists in a reality warp anyway; many people say that iPod sound quality can easily be beaten by other brands.
I had neglected the headphone socket on my phone, and a recent mention of such things here made me try it. At first, the sound seemed bright, detailed, but the bass was there too. After just a few minutes, I felt listening fatigue, and knew that, yes, I still had to take my heavy brick of a Cowon A2 on train and plane trips. No idea what the frequency range of my phone is, but anyway, frequency response is just
one of the aspects of sound quality: it says what we can hear, but I don't think it says anything about how good it will be.
Almost any computer that you buy, including laptops, will have a headphone socket (and even a microphone socket). Many will even be ready to output multichannel home-theatre sound. All this on motherboard that, in total, cost less than a mid-price soundcard.
Even these built-in soundcards, which cost the manufacturers hardly anything, are vastly better than the early add-in cards (soundblaster by name and nature), and I think they are better than most people realise --- but I admit that I don't use mine.
So, yet again: all DACs are not born equal.
You might share my deep suspicion, though, about the intense marketing of hifi DACs, and the belief that it has caused in the hifi community. Doubt is a powerful marketing tool. People are buying, for instance, high-quality CD players, then they get some doubt:
do I need a DAC? You can see that from the threads here. If a person already has a good CD player, then no, they probably do not
need a DAC: the one they have already is good enough!
If, on the other hand, they want to get more out of a modest CD player, or they want to get hifi sound from their PC, or they have several devices with digital output, and want to get the best analogue sound from them all, with similar sound flavour, colour, whatever, or lack thereof, I'd be the first to say: Buy a DAC!
That is DACs in context, as I see it. I don't own a stand-alone DAC, although I have quite a few DACs, and I hope I'm being fair.
But... I am
still deeply suspicious about high-price hifi DACs, because I am sure that marketing department thought has gone like this...
--- Whoa! We can sell something that does a fraction of what a soundcard does, for several times the price!
--- Double Whoa! In fact, we can price it at the same price as people are used to paying for any other hifi-separate device!
It's called pricing according to what the market will stand, and has nothing to do with actual value.
But can I say that no multi-lakh DAC could possibly be worth it? No, of course I can't (especially as I haven't heard them) --- but my cynicism would be a little less if it was made for the pro sound market, rather than the hifi market. That's my prejudices
