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New vs. old DACs - opinions?

I'm on the market for a new DAC. I've noticed that you can find used DACs from, say, 8 years ago that are heavily marked down from their original price. I just saw one sell for $400 that was originally $1500, for example.

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but the progression of DACs seems very different from that of amps... an old amp, like McIntosh, is still highly competitive today... but it seems that newer DACs are more evolved, refined, and use higher quality parts for less money, right?

Another thought is - before DACs were as widely used as they are today, perhaps the mark-up was much greater in the past...? Where-as now, with the influx of foreign manufactured DACs, there is a healthy bit of competition that keeps prices down by limiting the manufacturer mark-up. Correct me if I'm off here as well.

So, overall I'm wondering if I would be better off buying something new like a Keces or MHDT DAC or finding something older that is heavily marked down.
djembeplay
tok20000's avatar
tok20000
608 posts
 
This is an interesting question that seems a bit too general.

One thing I can say is that in the last 20 years, transports have gotten a lot better. This is one reason I have a difficult time comparing old DACs I have had to the newer ones. I know my transport is tons better than older ones I have had. One does not know what their DAC can do until they hook it up to a killer transport. And 20 years ago, those were way WAY expensive. The cost of great transports has fallen a lot.

I always recommend getting a great transport first (I like a music server with an Empirical Audio Off Ramp Turbo device) using the best ripping and playback software). You hook this up to almost any DAC and you are going to have a great idea how that DAC performs. So many transports back in the day (10 - 20 years ago) were awful... And this did not contribute to the sound of older DACs in the least.

Keith
jmcgrogan2's avatar
jmcgrogan2
6,346 posts
 
I didn't mean to insinuate that new DAC's have not improved over older DAC's, Many replies here are simply stating that current DAC's are better than older DAC's, technology has improved, I think there is no argument there. I was under the impression that we were talking costs vs. performance here.

Certainly a $1500 DAC today will sound better than a $1500 DAC from 6 years ago, however, in the marketplace their street prices will be very different. So let's say we compare apples to apples from a street price point of view. Since digital gear seems to depreciate fairly rapidly, let's assume that after 6 years the DAC is now selling for 25% of it's MSRP. So is a $1500 new DAC as good as a 6 year old $6000 DAC? Obviously, as in all things audio, there is no one right answer, only opinions.

A similar comparison might be would you prefer to buy a brand new Ford or a older used Mercedes. Each side will have it's advocates and detractors.

Cheers,
John
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,428 posts
 
"I always recommend getting a great transport first"

- why would you buy transport first not knowing what type of DAC you'll end up with. Fancy transport with upsampling DACs like Benchmark DAC1 or Bel Canto DAC3 is a waste of money since all transports will sound exactly the same.

The only advantage of expensive transport over cheap DVD player is low output jitter. Benchmark DAC1 has jitter bandwidth of 3Hz and at the frequency of interest (kHz) reaches over 100dB rejection. If you take into consideration that jitter caused artifacts were at level of roughly -85dB to start with then it is virtually impossible to hear any difference between transports unless one of them is not bit transparent (DSP processing, digital volume control etc).
tok20000's avatar
tok20000
608 posts
 
Kijanki,
All transports do not sound exactly the same plugged into upsampling DACs. I know this because I have one of those DACs (MSB Platinum DAC III, ~$7k retail, upsamples everything 4x). I can plug my OPPO DVD player into it, and the sound quality goes down compared to my music server. And it goes down substantially enough that a laymen can hear the difference (as I have A and B'd this with friends).
I shudder anytime a DAC claims that it can be hooked up to any old transport and sound great (or the same). This is like claiming (to me) all cables sound the same. The do not.

Keith
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,428 posts
 
On Benchmark forum people tried DAC1 with different transports and only few stated that they noticed faint difference (placebo effect?).

My point was to try first, before buying expensive transport and feeling stupid afterward when cheap DVD performs alike.

I read manufacturer description of your DAC. It states 16x and not 4x but it specifically says that it does not reclock (asynchronous upsampling). Without reclocking there is no jitter rejection and DAC is sensitive to jitter/transport. Upsampling by definition uses non-integer oversampling rates while simple oversampling (usually done by PLL) is always integer. So if it states 2x, 4x, 8x 16x oversampling be assure it is not jitter rejecting DAC (as stated on MSB website). Benchmark has equivalent of over 1 million times oversampling.
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