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

You can be sure vintage DACs are good simply by the state of the huge vintage market, all the refurbished vintage DACs, the small cottage industry of artisans making beautiful wood cabinets to show off fine vintage DACs, and by looking at how many decades old DACs sell today for more money used than they cost when they were new back in the day. People just can't get enough of that vintage DAC sound, and they are willing to pay for it. 

Oh, wait a minute, sorry, my mistake. That's turntables. Vintage turntables. Old DACs people throw away. Sorry. Nevermind.

Oh, wait a minute, sorry, my mistake. That's turntables. Vintage turntables. Old DACs people throw away. Sorry. Nevermind.

Very “interesting” explanation about vintage DACs. Oh, wait, sorry, about vintage turntables.

MC you're a peach. :-)

LOL, I'll tell you what, I have a Krell 5.1 same time most of the HT preamps were both a HT system and stereo playback..

That HT unit has a DAC and stereo playback that will match a LOT of the newer units..  The gain stage is all class a, they are different..

Like my buddy says (All Krell and Martin Logan) "It's a Krell" he's not kidding.. I got my HT 5.1 from him for 200.00 12 years ago..  They have one of the best remotes EVER made. CnC from aluminum billet. I got to dig that out.. Great 3 speaker playback with sub control on the remote..
The remote sold for 350-500.00 LOL GOOD Buddy..

Regards

I had a CAL Audio Labs DAC and Pioneer Elite DAC/DVD player from the early 2000s that I was using for years.  When I decided to upgrade to modern DACs in the $500-1000 range a year or two ago, the differences (improvements) were noticeable.  I now use even more expensive DACs, one a modern design and one in production today but based on a vintage R2R chip.  Both exceed the $1000 DACs in sound quality.  Lessons learned: (1) not all DACs sound the same.  (2) vintage DACs, properly implemented, can sound great.  With respect to (2), I suspect we've learned a lot about handling digital signals in the past years, making older implementations more suspect.

On the digital front, who knows? But the analog conversion and the analog amp do make a difference. Very rare to have a good sounding cheap amp.