tube dacs vs solid state dacs

By your premise, Elizabeth is wrong. She points to the crappy PS in "all" tube DACs being the cause of "inferior" sound. You point to the DAC. You don't help her case at all.

Shakey

Shakey, I may stand corrected. Perhaps Liz and Marakanetz can clarify their posts. I echo what I said about the DAC IC -- it's critical to sound quality. But at least in the case of ARC gear, the innards, including power supply, are based on the landmark Ref 3. In no way would I concur that ARC went cheap on their CDPs.

I have heard that ARC may be going the straight DAC route at this point. I am not aware of a CD-9 coming on line, but I could be wrong. The CD-8 is almost 4 years old. That's generally when ARC rolls out a new product. It may be that ARC is of the view that redbook CD has run its course and it's time to go the DAC route. Just speculation my my part.

Bifwayne,
The DAC chip is important(no arguement) but 'many' various brands of CDP/DACs use the same chip yet sound vastly different.The notion that'all' tube DAC/CDP have subpar power supplies is just incorrect.

I have heard tube and non tube designed DAC and cdps that sound good. For years my digital playback of choice was a Tube Research Labs modified Sony universal player. Not a tube in sight, but wonderful sound. It actually replaced a player with a tube output stage.

Now I have an outboard DAC with a tube output stage. It sounds great and replaced the TRL Sony. I agree with Charles1dad. It's more about the implementation than the sum of the parts. To my way of thinking, the PS and analogue stage is more important than the DAC chip.

Shakey

can i deduce from the posts i have read, that regardless of tube selection, if there are problems in design, the tube cannot overcome them ? for example, an inferior dac chip can not be ameliorated by selecting the right tube.