How old is too old for a Dac?

@spenrock

Though there were some useful posts in reply to my OP, your reply seems to be more of the information I was looking for. And it makes sense.

One would have to be close to a wide range of product developments over many years, and there likely many people around with that knowledge set that don’t have a dog in the hunt.

Bryston, Ressonessence, Chord... Do you mean newer ones? 

Thanks

I have a lightly-modified Oppo 103 CD player.  I have run it straight into my preamp and also through a Jolida FX DAC, Schiit Gungnir, and a Channel Island Audio DAC with an external power supply, and could discern zero difference with the inclusion of these DACs.  I had audio pals come by for the comparison and nobody could tell the difference.
I upgraded to the Oppo about 3 years ago and the sonic improvement was absolutely profound over my 6 year old Consonance tube CD player, which had been a huge improvement over my 20 year old Rotel CD player.   The Oppo CD player is, in my opinion, a glimpse of audio nirvana for small money and obviated the need for a DAC.  Whatever you do, try before you buy. 

I know it’s ’sacrilege’ here on AG to suggest such a thing, but by way of a fun project that’s not too expensive and might deliver unexpectedly positive results, you might consider something like a Raspberry Pi and DAC daughter board, then rip your discs to FLAC using EAC.

I’m using a HiFiBerry and have been thrilled with the results, especially given the fact that I don’t think there’s a player/console in my budget that would be able to keep up with the rest of my system. All in, it was under $120 for the Pi3, HiFiBerry, case and power supply. As a point of reference, Bryston uses the HiFiBerry in their own DAC, so it can’t be all that bad.

If you decide to go this route, it would be interesting to hear the observations of you more experienced guys comparing the sound of this ’new’ technology to that of traditional ’high end’ products.

^ I’ve considered Raspberry Pi since it doesn’t cost much to try it out. Unfortunately my ears are far from educated with current tech. Combine this with the little amount of gear on hand to compare it with... I’m not sure how useful my assessment would be.

But yeah, so much of the cost of high end stuff is the cosmetics, and the profit for everyone in the supply chain.

you should go to http://www.computeraudiophile.com/ and ask there

a lot of equip. designers and serious audiophiles that specialize in DACs and streaming are there