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

I was thinking of buying a new DAC, the choices are many, but some of the lowest price DAC’s are to be had from yesteryear. For example, i took home an Esoteric D05 yesterday and while I have not been able to hook it up to my Esoteric player, due to no suitable connector cable, I was wondering if any of the better DAC’s from years back are really worth having? The example I have in for audition, while close to SOTA back about 13+ years ago, has no USB connection! To that, it has had years of usage, and appears pristine although I am unsure as to what can fail in a DAC? Obviously no warranty, yet a price point that is somewhat attractive, particularly for the build quality.

 

The biggest issue seems to be no USB connection to the upstream gear, but also perhaps the difference in price between a DAC like this, and a more modern DAC with better DAC chips/USB etc.,would simply make this one not a great deal. Thoughts?

128x128daveyf
celtic66
1,656 posts
 

This may help.  http://tweakaudio.com/EVS-2/Company_Info.html

chayro
2,986 posts
 

I agree that some very good modern dacs are available for under $1k, but I totally disagree that the modern dacs are necessarily better than the best dacs of the past. The Naim 555 and CDS3, the Vekian, Wadia, Zanden were incredible. As far as “new technology”, many of the hot dacs today are using the oldest dac technology- resistor ladder and old R2R chips. That said, buying older digital products may not be a good idea from a repairability standpoint. I know Naim supports its old products, but good luck with much else. And anything with a transport is very risky as well.

akg_ca's avatar
akg_ca
2,241 posts
 

@soix 

+1

the ok’d ines still have a limited useful life with optical input functionality out of the TV panel in my 2.1 TV “B” system.

mulveling's avatar
mulveling
1,896 posts
 

The Audiophilleo USB-to-SPDIF converter was popular ~ 10 years ago, and it sounded better (sometimes much better) than direct USB inputs of DACs at that time. It can also be used to support USB for older DACs - just stick it into the coax input of any DAC. Denafrips makes newer, higher end digital converters that will convert USB to SPDIF. And I think Matrix makes a more affordable one. 

Sure, digital keeps getting better by miles but somehow never really satisfies analog guys like me. I expect some of the old DACs would hold up pretty well in their sound quality, especially if you pursue a more "analog" sound, but will get absolutely trashed in the measurements game. The top Stax and Sonic Frontiers DACs of yesteryear still might be interesting, and I believe Philips Crown DAC chips are still sought after.

erik_squires
16,059 posts
 

I really liked the sound of old Theta D/A, so I think that is mostly Burr-Brown DACs. However, post 2000 DAC jitter rejection and playback of Redbook (44.1/16) got significantly better.

Older DAC's really like hi rez signals, while the best new DACs perform very similarly.  If you want to try out some old DACs you might want to explore Wireworld's Remedy reclocker. The limitation there is everything gets converted to 96kHz/24 bit, regardless of the incoming signal (can be higher, or lower).  I have found that, for instance, with the ARC DAC 8 this really improved performance.

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