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

Count me as one who can definitely hear the differences between (at le

ast some) DACs.

Having said that, I’m not suggesting that "new is always better" or that there aren’t vintage products that are competent with red-book CD (16 bit, 44.1 kHz) audio. But count me as one listener to can attest that not all DACs sound the same. When I bought my first stand-along DAC (Audio Alchemy back in the 90s... along with their DTI Pro Jitter Filter and 16->20 bit converter), I brought my stereo to the university where I was attending as I wanted to host an audio "demo" for some folks in the music department. The goal was to demonstrate basic principles of high-fidelity audio to people who "love music" but tended to have very little understanding of music reproduction... so one by one I sat each person in the sweet spot and played a Billy Joel track to demonstrate "imaging" which on its own was a big eye opener for lots of listeners. When I was about to pack everything up someone asked "hey, what does all that stuff do" pointing to my stack of audio alchemy gear. I said "oh, that’s the gear that takes the digital data for the music and converts to analog" and he asked "well what would it sound like without all that, just using the CD player?" So I moved a couple of cables and we played the same track that we had just been listening to via the analog output of my Pioneer CD player. WOW. The sound transformed from the lush, airy, liquid character everyone had just been hearing to flat, lifeless, and harsh. Without any coaching from me this fellow said "Yuck! Yeah, that equipment you have really makes a difference!"

In any case... to the caller at hand... there is good sounding vintage gear if red-book CD is your music library and you don’t need DSD, MQA etc. though with D/A converters, as with all things... personal taste and emotion come in to play (i.e. is detail more important than an organic midrange? Or is imaging more important than dynamics and bass slam)? Whether new or old there is never "one right" sound that everyone would prefer. Let your ears be the judge!

Dear, thank you for such interesting story. Yes I agree with that, your ears have to decide which sounds right.

well the DAC in my Emotiva CDP doesn't sound as good as my MHDT DAC

In general I wouldn’t buy a DAC older than 10 years or so.

Maybe older DCS ring dac or similar if well cared for but only for the right price.

jasonbourne52

In controlled A/B tests nobody can distinguish a $100 DAC from a $1000+ one.

Please tell us about the tests you’ve conducted that led you to this conclusion. I’m also interested in why you confined your efforts to simple A/B tests. For those interested in the most valid scientific blind audio testing, A/B/X is the gold standard.

I have no particular faith or allegiance to blind testing but if you’re going to undertake such work, it makes sense to engage the best protocols.

yep, good dacs from way back when will sound as good as good dacs from today

usual concerns about aging internal components, as for any aging electronic gear, should be checked out

then the add’l concern is input signal compatibility, esp. w r t higher res feeds used in more recent times

examples of mine in hand -

1 - 1997 vintage van alstine fet topp dac, with its lovely philips tda1545 r2r nos chip and 12ax7 output stage.... sounds as good as any $1500-2000 dac today - but it will only accept 44.1 khz input due to its crystal semi input chip of the day

2 - 2003 vintage modded musical fidelity trivista 21 dac w bb1792a dsd converter and 5703 mini tube output stage - it accepts all inputs and sounds as good, if not better than the current high dollar dacs out there - in fact better than psa ds, dena term, schiit yggy in terms of imaging timbre and holography