The ak4495 is not the top audio chip on the market today.
1, although the ak4495 is an excellent audio chip, in the rapid development of audio technology, other chips (such as ESS9038PRO) continue to be introduced, beyond the performance of the ak4495 can provide.
2, also due to technological development, although ak4495 has been greatly improved in many aspects, it is still limited by its ADC technology such as jitter, resulting in it not having perfect performance. Although not the top-of-the-line chip, the ak4495 is still widely used in hi-fi audio devices in its price range and can provide satisfactory sound quality performance.
AK4495 is a classic top DAC chip, I played it a few years ago when it was just produced, the impression of PCM playback thickness is very good, but the effect of DSD is unbearable to look at, AKM DSD is indeed much worse than the ES9038 played in the past two years.