Mark Levinson n°39 or dedicated DAC?

This support issue is probably the main potential stopper indeed. The person who sells the 39 just got it revised and everything seems to work fine. I know I'd take a risk by buying it. I'm just wondering if the 39 is really as outdated as one could think. I like the analog sound style of the late 90s ML products but what I don't know is if some of the more recent DACs are miles away from the 39 or just different (as in more details, wider soundstage, ...)

If the price is right I'd go for the #39 . I've owned a bunch of Levinson gear, not only do they rarely need service but Levinson has always found a solution for any problem , obsolete or not .

I don't understand why you would want 90's era digital technology in 2011. Without putting a price tag to the Levinson 39 to match up to current DACS... this is a theoretical debate... (I don't know of any blanket advice on choosing between old digital gear and the new digital pieces in)

When you compare the sound quality difference between 90's era digital technology and 2010 technology with different output stages, power supplies, reliability strictly by reputation... you are forced to compare the dollar values you assign to each piece. That's tough unless you do a lot of this kind of thing or one piece is completely undervalued. It does not sound like you are going to be buying and selling lots of equipment as part of the hobby.

I would think a modern DAC would allow you to use high resolution formats and choosing a DAC that does this with files stored on your server would eliminate a 90's era DAC.

The other important question is,"would the rest of my system be resolving enough to distinguish a difference".

Get a standalone DAC that is up to date and does up to 24 bit/192 kHz sampling rate...preferably a DAC that allows you listen to the source's native bit depth and sampling rate w/o upsampling/dithering as default. I love the PS Audio Perfect Wav DAC for this very reason. 16 bit sounds best played back 16 bit. 24 bit sounds best played back 24 bit. The Perfect Wav does this great for $3K price tag and I'm sure you could find a lightly used one in the $2k price range. It's a hard DAC to beat for the price, imo given the fact you don't have to upsample like most of the other entry level dacs these days.

I'm not trading in my Levinson 360s anytime soon, even if it is 90's technology - LOL. It's almost vinyl like in its rendering and handles 24/96... Using one of the many bridge products out there I feed digital from my Mac MIni into the Levinson and couldn't be happier. Are there better dac's out there; sure but you're talking a big jump in class and cost (i.e. Weiss, dCSs, Berkeley, AMD, etc.).

Personally if the price is right I’d go for the Levinson 39.