Upgrade DAC or Buy New

Nickt: Thanks; I'll keep that in mind.

Stereo: I'm already using a preamp in the form of a Tact 2.2 XP. The Tact has an internal DAC that can be used to feed power amps directly, or I can feed an outboard DAC using its digital outputs. I'm also using the Tacts built in digital crossover, so I have to use the Tact volume control. I suppose I can connect a preamp in the chain before the main speaker power amps, but I would have to set the volume of the preamp at some fixed level since I am using the Tacts volume control. I would prefer not to do that however, and use a DAC that has a high enough output level.

Larryi: Yeah, I think that it what I'm realizing. I find it interesting that my 10 year old DAC (using the discontinued Burr Brown 1704 chips) sounds better to me than the much newer DAC (using AKM chips) built into the Tact unit.

Smeyers,

My CD player, a Naim CD555, is a current, in-production model. It uses "vintage" 1704 chips. I don't know what the current price of this player (the dollar is dropping oh so fast), but last I looked it had a retail price around $30k; that is a pretty strong endorsement for this chip. I think I read somewhere that Charles Hansen of Ayre is a big admirer of this chip, even though he cannot get this chip for his own production.

Larryi,

Interesting; I just found out that Esoteric also uses them in their $14k X-01 CD Player. As I also mentioned earlier, Empirical uses them in their Spoiler DAC; this is a quote from their site: "PCM1704U-K D/A chips - some of the best-sounding D/A chips ever produced".

Interesting... It makes me think about keeping the DAC I have, but I would need an active preamp after the DAC, since the output voltage is too low. Do you know if a simple active line stage is sold for this purpose? I only need a single input and single output (probably with the ability to adjust output gain).

Smeyers,

In '95 you were 98% CD & 2% LP. Sad indeed.

2008 Forget the CD or make it 2% CD & 98% LP and put the 2K or so into analog. =8^)

Shoot away.

Glory,

Now I'm 95% digital through a Sonos system, 5% through CD. No LP in my future; too fiddly and inconvenient for me.