Are "vintage" DAC's worthwhile, or is this a tech that does not age well

Not a dac, but my former Sony XA7ES CD player built in 1998 stood proud against any currently built CD player. I’m wondering how much of digital is about smoke and mirrors? I regret selling that player which had a proprietary disc drawer which was at least on par with high dollar Wadia decks.

The older ES series were tanks w great sonics. Still in demand.

Redbook via a bit perfect rip on a Naim or other good server is also a sonic wonder

Interesting post.  Very interesting responses and observations.

My contribution:

1.  All dac do not sound the same.
2.  The analog output section (basically a pre-amp) and the thought and effort put into the power supply matters greatly.

Also, something that i did not see listed in the responses is;  as for comparisons of any piece of equipment vs any other, if the volume of the system isn't exactly matched while doing the comparisons, one will make the determination that the differences they hear are based on whether one piece is better than the other, when actually if the gains weren't matched first, the determination is false.

It is not simply plug, play and listen then plug the new piece in and listen again.  most equipment has different gains, and to be honest  in the A/B comparison, gain/volume matching is a must.

I do that anytime I compare equipment for potential purchase.
Another important part is that one must listen to the equipment to be compared in the same system, swapping only that piece, adjust the volume to match and listen.

I've listened to and compared many DACS and I can tell you each and every one I've listened to sounds different in the same system with volume matched.  Some subtle differences, some major. Depends on the analog section (how well thought out and constructed it was) and how robust the power supply is.

Would I take a previous top of the line high end DAC today?  maybe.  But my current Aurender music server/ripper/streamer only has USB output.  So, my current DAC had to have a USB input.

Older DACS don't have USB.  

enjoy

@minorl You can always put a USB to SPDIF converter between your Aurender and DAC. That’s what I do after my computer. My DAC only has BNC input.

@minorl 

you make a very important point: the analogue section of a dac is actually a preamp. In most cases a simple attenuator will suffice to regulate volume to the power amp. Ideally therefore, the manufacturer of the dac should include analogue rather than digital lossy attenuation. 

This might lead one to conclude that rather than endlessly speculate on delta-sigma vs R2R technologies as well as the merits of various DAC chips, more focus should go to the quality of the analogue stage. 

It would be very interesting to analyse DACs with a digital out via a reference preamp vs their own analogue stage. While one would still have to speculate about the implementation quality of the digital out- and inputs as well as the cable, it would become a very worthwhile route to better focus on the analogue stage, which after all is the source of most RFI/EMI as well as ground level distortions in dacs.