DAC's from the past, are any of them really worth much today?

I will take a 20+ year old Audio Note DAC 5 Signature over just about any other DAC on the market today.  It was crazy expensive then, and the current Audio Note DAC 5 Signature is much more crazily priced.  I bet this model has not changed much in 20 years.  To Audio Note's way of thinking, the most important part of a DAC is its analogue stage.  I don't know if this is true  or not, but I've heard their old and new DACs and they are very good sounding to me--relaxed and natural sounding without being murky or lacking in dynamics.  

There are other companies that build modern DACs around very old vintage chips because they sound better with such chips.  Most of the advancement in chip design has been to make them smaller, make them utilize less power and offer more functions that support there use in mobile devices--sound quality is hardly a priority.  Companies like Audio Note, Naim, and Lampizator horde old chips because they deliver the sound these companies seek.   Whether or not that is your sound too is a matter of personal taste; but one really has to hear such machines to decide this.

DAC chips became a lot better, analogue output not that much. That's where vintage DACs more superior and let people keep them vs. newer models.

Let the new DAC chip perform in the vintage chassis with the rest of electronics same, things may change quite a-bit.

I could not found any defects at all with my very resolving speakers of the NOS battery dac S.P.S. with a single TDA 1543 chip ...

The only people who criticize it speak about more "details" with other more complex architecture and i know for a fact that i hear all details there is with this dac but the organic musicality, the soundstage and imaging and timbre naturalness is spot on also ...

Then why these people spoke so much about way better dac than it because it lack "details" ?

I believe that most people with costlier system had forgotten that the house/room signal ratio level matter , EMI shielding matter too , that speakers resonance is there even if you dont know it and vibrations control is madatory , and i believe that they own system in a living room with not much acoustic controls if there is one ...

In the opposite all that is adressed in my system then i hear what this simple dac is able to do in optimal environment without the need to buy a more resolving useless dac... If i could and want to buyone i will buy only a more musical one and this will be hard and very costly ...

Upgrading often appear silly ...It is often the case when all three embeddings are relatively under controls with a relatively already good system ... I own one ...

There are other companies that build modern DACs around very old vintage chips because they sound better with such chips.  Most of the advancement in chip design has been to make them smaller, make them utilize less power and offer more functions that support there use in mobile devices--sound quality is hardly a priority.  Companies like Audio Note, Naim, and Lampizator horde old chips because they deliver the sound these companies seek.   Whether or not that is your sound too is a matter of personal taste; but one really has to hear such machines to decide this.

One of the things that seems to be a factor with older DAC's, besides their older chip design ( which may or may not be a detriment), is the inability of the older units to support the current connection protocols. For example, the DAC i am demoing has no USB connections. As a result, to connect it to most current streamers is not possible. This severely limits the usability of the unit. Apple are good at consistently changing their connectors in order to supersede and antiquate their older product line. This seems to be a factor here in digital audio as well.