[DiabloD3]

This common knowledge is still incorrect.

Good news, though, there are a lot of inexpensive good external DACs out there. Over the past decade, an entire industry grew up to fix this problem.

[ahartmetz]

Between these DACs and / or Chi-Fi class D amps (some of them with built-in DACs), nowadays you can spend 90% of the Hi-Fi budget on speakers. It's incredible how good electronics you can get for how cheap these days.