Why is digital audio so complicated? Where did it all go wrong?

[Confused]

If we look at the new high-end DACs released on the market, we can witness that all the technologies we have been discussing here, like galvanic isolation of the USB input, high precision clock feeding a re-clocking unit, are now embarked into these new DACs. As an illustration, see the description of this one : http://www.audiostream.com/content/emm-l...-converter

Can we infer from this that these technologies add to the sound quality ? I would be tempted to, but I might not be completely independent in this debate as I own Mutec MC-3+ USB in front of my Devialet.

I can only guess that, with some patience, we will probably see these technologies embarked on the Devialet's DAC too :-)

Looking at the specs on the Melco website I see they claim: "Audio-grade ultra-low jitter data clock - eliminates any possibility of data jitter at source".

So audio grade clocks everywhere.  I wonder how the Melco clock compares to the Mutec?  Maybe Meclo > Mutec > AES/EBU Devialet might work very nicely?  Plus in terms of the topic of this thread, such a set up would not be complicated at all.