I think what Moke was getting at, and I tend to agree with him, is that A/D converters are improving fairly rapidly. a top-of-the-line A/D converter from 10 or 15 years ago certainly isn't top of the line anymore. on the other hand, a high quality analog mic will remain a high quality analog mic. that's why people love some old vintage mics - they still sound great. (and I don't mean to imply that these new digital mics from neumann and schoeps won't sound great). so if you stick with analog mics, you'll always be able to use your A/D converter of choice. where-as with the digital mics - they may sounds great - but I'd be willing to bet that A/D converters in 10 or 15 years will sound better than they do today. so, with the digital mics, you will someday be "stuck" with older A/D converters.
thoughts?
The Neumann uses a patented state-of-the-art 28-bit converter - it should be many years before that gets superseded. When a good 28-bit chip becomes generally available it will, no doubt, be included in the production version.
AES42 dictates a 24-bit output and this will stay as it is for several years - if it eventually gets amended the new spec would be included in later versions. It may be then possible to modify earlier KM-Ds to have the 28-bit outputted I am not sure at this stage.
Sennheiser bought out the Orpheus headphones with integral D/A about 10 years ago (or more) and that DAC is still one of the best sounding around, even after all this time. So do it properly at the start and it may not be outdated so quickly.
What you forget about mic pres and external A/D converters is that you loose about 25dB of the mics dynamic range due to the headroom you have to allow for peaks.
Having a 28-bit A/D at the mic. capsule, you get the full 130dB dynamic range of the capsule and a digital peak limiter in the mic. prevents overload distortion.
But remember - a KM-D module is about a quarter of the price of your PC and you happily bin your PC every couple of years and get a new one. At the very worse, the KM-D would last at least 10 years before it needs changing I would have thought (likely much longer), so it is still cheap at the price.
All the mic. heads, clips, remote cables, etc. of the system would not need changing - so it is definitely worth investing in. I put my own cash into it, and I do not like investing in stuff that's will go quickly (except the bl**dy PC
).
Does this answer you OK?