I thought the dongle contains the DAC, meaning that if the electronics inside the dongle are shit, that means your audio will sound like shit.
For the active choice that apple made to remove the headphone jack but not use USB-C, they should be keeping stock of the adapters longer than just a few years.
I know the USB-C ones are just a normal usb device and will work with any device. I assume that the ones with lghtning work in the same way.