How can the DAC receive an analog signal?
It's not a DAC. It's an integrated amplifier IC, intended originally for car audio purposes. Back in the 1980s or so when it was conceived.
There's this parallel between photography and music/audio. In both domains, we see people fussing endlessly over the line the connects the creative art to its consumption. In my view, the closer you get to the end points, the more it matters. The stuff in the middle is the least interesting. In both music and photography, the artist's vision is the main determinant if it's worth spending any time on to begin with. Then there are quasi-technical choices like composition and orchestration that matter, and performance in music. At the other extreme, if someone is visually impaired or only hears a certain part of the spectrum, a lot of the 'fidelity' is lost anyway. If people view prints under dollar-store LED bulbs intended for a clothes cabinet or listen to music on $10 computer speakers, or in a room where the speakers are positioned in such a way that acoustic destroy any fidelity to begin with, what does it matter what happens on the wire/process in between those end points?
Yet, virtually all of the talk on photo forums as well as DIY audio focuses on the wire.
