Older is better - D/A chip?

I have once read Charlie Hansen's post on one of the forums, where he stated that DAC chip itself is only responsible for 10% of the final sound. Power supplies, digital filter, jitter management, I/V conversion and output stage are by far more important and account for the remaining 90%.

I have had a veritable parade of CD players through my system in the past several years including modest Music Halls, Shandlings, and Rotels and more expensive units from Lector, Musical Fidelity, Audio Aero and DACS from Benchmark, Cal Alpha and a Sony NES 999ES Platinum Modwright. I recently happened upon my old (1986) Magnavox CD 560 with the Philips TDA 1541 chip D/A converter and Philips CDM-2 CD mechanism (no mods whatsoever)when I was cleaning the basement and put it in my main system just for old times sake. WOW, what a musical sound. Shames all of the new stuff. It is still in my main system as we speak with no plans to remove it. I also put my old circa 1986 MG IIIa magnepans (factory rebuilt by Magnepan a few years back) to replace my MG 20.1Rs which are now in my vacation house and got another shock as to how amazing they sound. Maybe the sound we keep searching for we already once had. So Pdscpecl and Elizabeth I too discovered that some old stuff really was and still is amazing. Roscoeiii, I do agree with your points also but from personal experience was shocked to hear the old Magnavox in comparison to the new generation units.

@Zd542

Sabre DACs seem to be the flavour of the week.

DAC of the weak is a DAC owned by an extremely weak person

The older DAC chips, particularly ladder DACs and NOS DACs do sound better, provided they are driven by a low-jitter source. The reason for this is simple: no digital filtering.

The disadvantage is they dont support higher sample rates like 192 and they dont get quite as much detail in the HF as the newer chips.

It is possible to get the same great SQ with modern DAC chips, provided you can select or control the amount of digital filtering. This way you get the great sound of those older chips, but with none of the disadvantages. I set my digital filter on my DAC to 192 when I play all sample-rates. Sounds like a NOS DAC, but better.

The ancillary circuits, such as the output stage, I/V converter and power subsystem are all important as well to achieving an analog sound, but if the digital filtering is auto-selected, it usually wrecks the track, particularly 44.1.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio